Lets make TIME metric !

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

Yes, pretty much.

Sensible use of metres ranges from attometres (can be used to measure the size of atoms) right up to prefixes that exceed light years.
(BTW for those who don’t know a light year is a measure of distance… not time. The number of times I see it in sci fi movies as a measure of time p!$$e$ me off… }>
It is the distance light travels in a vaccuum over the time period of one year.)

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

Wouldn’t 1000 minutes be a kilominute instead of a day?

SOC

“Peace through kinetic solutions”

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

“Im not suggesting, but it is scientific fact that our internal clocks are sinked to the Earth’s orbit and relative to the Moon and the Sun. “

In what way?
Are you suggesting that if left alone in solitary confinement you could tell the time, whether it was day or night or what the season was?
Ask a submariner who might live in an 18 hour world when at sea… no sun or moon and 6 hour shifts.
We organise our days around daylight… I do agree with that… but workers doing nightshift are able to operate perfectly well living a life opposite to what you seem to propose we are all built for.
Night shift isn’t that hard… in fact the only shift work I have ever done that actaully was hard was rolling shift work. (ie regularly changing from night shift to day shift… very hard on the body.)

The whole idea behind the metric system is not to make everything base 10, though humans like base ten systems (as we have 10 fingers).
The whole idea behind the metric system is that only one value be used for measuring with standard grouping units used.
Ie instead of feet, and inches and miles there are just Metres for measuring distance. Obviously for measuring small things that previously you’d use inches for you’d use cms or mms. (ie 100ths or 1000ths of a metre).
It should be the same with time.
Years are needed, months are also a useful measure, and days are necessary. Weeks are also useful.
Years are pretty much fixed, and months must remain roughly the same, though the current variation (ie 28, 29, 30, 31 days) should be removed. Days are pretty much unchangable, but weeks can be varied to your hearts content.
Milleniums, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds would all be replaced with one time constant.
New Milleniums, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds will be created as time periods based on this new time constant.

Everyone knows a day is 24 hours long and that a week is 7 days long… it is the other measures that are not so familiar… how many seconds in a month? …of course it depends on the month.
How many seconds in a day… you can calculate it easily enough but few of us would keep such useless information at the front of our minds.

Of course when we get to Mars we will have to create a new time system for Mars… of course a star based time system will also need to be created for those who will colonise the moons… earth or mars based systems would not be of much use on Triton or Ganymede.

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

Im not suggesting, but it is scientific fact that our internal clocks are sinked to the Earth’s orbit and relative to the Moon and the Sun. As to 28 hour days, you must mean the each hour is relatively shorter…or else it doesn’t make sense. Then the hours and the sun will be off sync and you’ll get a periodic oscillation of time relative to the Sun. Pretty much like sampling a analog signal off phase…you’ll end up with a periodic wave. As to making it more perfect..sure, but it’ll just mean the “time” units will become more non-metric. Let’s say you make each day 10 hours (this is equilavent to current 24 hours) to sync with the sun, then there are say 10 days in a new month? 100 day’s in a new month? Remember you’re based 10 (metric) now. Then how many full months are there for one full Earth rotation about the sun? This is like dividing with integers…what a stupid idea.

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

>ha…it took thousands of years for humans to perfect the
>time system to sync with our body and now you want to make
>it metric????

Hmmm i always thought humans naturally adopted a 28 hour day cycle or something like that, not twenty four anyway.

As for decimalising the date system i’m all for it… make my life easier as sorting out dates on computers is a nightmare!!!!

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

>This should only take a few miuntes of your time. Seeing as
>how everything has to be metric nowadays, why has no-one
>thought about making TIME metric as well ?.
>
>Lets start from scratch here.
>
>60 seconds = 1 minute…why 60? who thought that one up ?
>60 minutes = 1 hour…again why 60
>24 hour = 1 day ! blimey, they loved making things hard
>when they thought that lot up.
>
>Just suppose it went metric, youd have for example :-
>
>50 seconds = 1 minute
>50 minutes = 1 hour
>20 hours = 1 day.
>
>To make this work the time interval of 1 second would have
>to be altered slightly making it longer than it currently is
>
>Now I know my maths is cr*p but even I can add 50 and 50 to
>make 100 easier than 60 and 60. Keep it simple !
>
>We would end up with 1000 minutes in 1 day instead of 1440
>and it all adds up a lot easier than the current system.
>Navigation could be simpler cos you’re using easier numbers
>to play with.
>
>It’d have the added bonus of you not having to work 24hr
>shifts, 20 hours sounds alot better doesnt it!
>
>This could even extend to calendar months. 10 Months = 1
>year and each month = 36.5 days to keep the tme scales
>roughly similar to present day. Hmmmmm…what to do with the
>0.5 day spare each month ? I know, lets make the first
>monday of each month a half day !!!!. brilliant.
>
>Could this work ?
>
>Over to you guys (when you’ve finished laughing)while I
>finish yet another C*rlsb*rg
>
>cheers
>
>Gary

You have to make a system which is exectly the same as now, so way alter it if it works just fine?

jw

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 15-11-02 AT 04:43 AM (GMT)]”ha…it took thousands of years for humans to perfect the time system to sync with our body and now you want to make it metric????”

Come off it Vort… if that was true then there would be the same problems in Europe over adopting a new currency, or for changing from imperial to metric distance measures…

Most time measurements are based on astronomical events like day/night and the tilt of the Earth creating seasons, and the time it takes for the Earth to orbit the sun for years.
It has very little to do with the human body… or are you suggesting that the calendar is based on human menstral cycles?

Equally one could argue that it is not even perfected now as untidy things like daylight savings changes and extra days every four years to keep it accurate suggest that there is room for improvement.
I would also suggest that there are more caledar systems than the gregorian one that we in the west use now. There are many other calendars that might even do the job better than the one we use now.
By basing a Metric calendar on the existing one I doubt it would take 1,000 years to create most things like this are created pretty quickly and then only small changes are made over time.

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

ha…it took thousands of years for humans to perfect the time system to sync with our body and now you want to make it metric????

RE: Lets make TIME metric !

You could go completely metric like in Star trek and have years based of “stardate xyz.xy.y”.

Of course years and days would actually have to stay the same as they are useful for seasons and knowing when to sleep respectively but months and weeks can be completely flexible… or even ignored.

“36.5 days to keep the tme scales roughly similar to present day. “
I disagree here… if you are going to do it then you might as well do it properly with a complete metric or not metric at all system.
(What is the point of making minute calculations easier if it makes monthly ones harder…)