I have scientific question. Does anyone know why we have 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour?
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Minutes
Wikipedia points to http://www.wisteme.com/question.view?targetAction=viewQuesti...
Martina
Her Magesty's Chronology
The 60-base Greenwich time system is an extension of the 'Farthing' 12-base unit of crop weight estimation, in which, traditionally, a punter used the elbow-to-fingertip 'league' (a measure from which the modern football (or "soccer") field is derived (three leagues to a squared mizzen by twelve shillings) to douse the turnip yield of a common's holding, and by the use of the new imperial 'tonne.'
It's all logical, in a British sort of weigh.
;-)
Michelle
As it turns out, many cultures all around the world
have invented dozens, and sexagesimal systems sort of flow from that.
Both the Chinese and Europeans noticed that there were roughly twelve "moons" (months) in a year (a bit more, actually, but who's counting?), that the rough ratio of a man's foot to his height and the span of his arms is also roughly twelve to one, so in a world without handy tape measures people tended to measure things against their own bodies. Two of the most convenient measures are the span of one's arms (roughly six feet for a man) and the length of one's foot (roughly twelve inches for a man). The space between the mouth and the eyes is roughly a third of the height of an average head, All these ratios together make threes and sixes and dozens aesthetically pleasing, so the short answer to all these questions might well be that human beings are "built that way."
We *like* one in three and one in six ratios, quite aside from the number of our fingers, and even counting can be conveniently done in sixes if one adds a closed fist to complete the one-finger, two-finger... sequence on the digits.
And by strange coincidence, our "modern" and "scientific" metre just happens to be roughly two cubits (the length from the elbow to the fingertips used by the Egyptians to build their pyramids) *and* roughly one ten millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator. In other words, we've found a clever way to relate the size of the Earth itself to the proportions of the human body.
Are we vain, or what?
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Other fun units...
The inch's origin is disputed. The English word inch comes from Latin uncia meaning "one twelfth part" (in this case, one twelfth of a foot). However, in some other languages the word inch is similar to or the same as the word for thumb. In the UK, since 1066 an inch has also been defined as the length of three barleycorn. And if you think barleycorn as a unit is no longer used, think again - it's the basis of UK / US shoe sizes!
A furlong was a furrow's length - or the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. It was later standardised to forty rods. An acre was an area equivalent to one furlong x one chain.
The statute mile is currently eight furlongs, but as ever with imperial measurements, its definition has changed over time. The Roman mille passum was a thousand paces or approximately five thousand feet, whereas in various European countries, the Meile or mil could be anywhere up to 10km long!
The pint is derived from the gallon, and the UK/US difference dates back to an Act of Parliament in 1824.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
More confusing still
In some languages, the word for inch also means pinch or flea or fleabite and is related to a word for push or nudge. From French, this is where we get the word for the color puce, flea-colored or pinkish-gray. :)
It's assumed that ounce comes from the same Latin uncia meaning a twelfth of a pound.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Horses
are still measured in "hands," at four inches each.
And of course the Anglo-Saxon Foot was ten percent larger that the Roman (Italian) foot, and since we all know the relationship between the size of man's foot and his rod...
...that explains why the (Anglo-Saxon) surveyor's rod is sixteen and a half modern feet long, when it was meant to be fifteen Anglo-Saxon feet. This drives Italian men crazy.
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
A 12th of a Night is short play
Other auld measures:
A spatula is one twelfth of a spanking.
A smidgen is a twentieth of a nauf.
A nauf is also one half or side of an argument, as in: "That's a nauf from ye, younge lady!"
The Ainglishe language is a marvelous (from the ancient word for 'comic') thing.
;-)
Could it be...
...because we have 30 seconds in half a minute and 30 minutes in half an...oh!
Angharad
this might be the answer they taught us as kids
As they taught me in school much too long ago, it goes back at least to the Phoenicians who used a base-12 counting system instead of our base-10. If memory serves, they originally divided day into 12 hours and night into 12 hours, which sort of makes sense as long as you don't mind that hours have to get longer or shorter according to the season of the year and how long the sun would be up on any given day of a season. They were only working with sun dials, so they probably didn't much mind at first. But at some point they got interested in breaking each hour into smaller units and came up with 60 minutes. Which I suppose was either because that was the smallest gradation they could conveniently mark on most sun dials, or had something to do with their base-12 times the number five. Maybe the teacher told us that it was five fingers on one hand so that's how they got the got the five.
Then people started getting interested in measuring the passage of time more accurately and with units of time that didn't get longer or shorter according to the season. This mostly went in the direction of trying to build water clocks (based on dripping water at a constant rate of speed). As far as I know, the Phoenicians/Carthaginians/etc. didn't work on those, but the Greeks and Egyptians did so and eventually had great success. (The Chinese also, but that was half a world away from the Western history that has determined so much of how we in "the West" still do things today.) They were interested in doing this for two main reasons. The mundane and pragmatic reason was sentries dividing up the watch on city walls, or aboard ship, or wherever could divide up the watch fairly into the same amount of time on guard for each of them. The less immediately pragmatic reason was good old fashioned scientific curiosity.
Since the Romans eventually did so much to wipe out Phoenician culture (for instance, Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony) we don't have much left of that culture that we still use today. But we do still count some things in dozens and even grosses (a dozen times a dozen) and we do still have a 24-hour day.
I don't think scholars today have any clues about why the Phoenicians went with base-12 originally. It would seem that base-10 or maybe base-5 would be the obvious choices, since we five fingers on each hand so that adds up to ten fingers.
The stupid thing is that I just wrote this entire info dump without looking up the correct answer first. It's all based on what I think I remember from 6th grade, when I was just a wee thing and my brain was even smaller, and it was all so long ago that they hadn't even invented dirt yet. :-)
If my answer isn't correct, I hope it is at least entertaining? Others have already given a couple of online references for you to look it up, so you should be safe from any misinformation I might have unintentionally said.
-Annie
Its all about the Babylonians
They had two different counting system : 12 base ( rarely used) and Sexagesimal (60 base, most commonly used) : which was created with the ingenious idea to deal with complex division problem , the digit number(60 in their and 10 in ours) divided by some of the common prime numbers is simpler : 20 vs 3.333. It makes things like a third of X easy to express ( a third of an hour is 20 minutes, not 33.3333333 if we would have used a 100 minute hour).
So, how does it relate to time : Well the Babylonians were the one to have set the modern time standard so they got to pick the time format :D. so we got 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minute in an hour and 24 hours in a day (0.4 of the digit number in Sexagesimal or twice the digit number in the 12 base ).
And that what it's all about ;).
Lily.
time
the dozzen came into being as a common multiplier, because ancient math couldn't do fractions. the romans didn't have a value for zero, either; hence AM and PM beginning with 12.
this carries into the 8th or 9th century, when finer timekeeping was needed and instruments which could do that were developed.
12 can be devided (without fractions) by 2, 3, 4 and 6 (12=2*2*3), 60 is the product of 12 and the next prime number (5).