[Closed] Is time metric or imperial?

Scientific?

I'd say neither, but as it isn't strictly measured in multiples of ten, then that seems to discount metric.

Surely neither?

Oh yeah, sorry.

Days hours minutes seconds etc. would be imperial, metric would be seconds, milliseconds, kiloseconds, megaseconds, etc.

This is certainly a problem. We should invent metric time immediately, as the sort we currently have is no good.

Neither. It's Babylonian. Or possibly Sumerian.

It's neither. If anything it's lunar or solar, although I guess the day could have been divided into 10/10/100 units rather than 12/60/60. Distance can be measured by anything that is declared a standard measure.

In fact, why wasn't time metricised ? It would make working out fuel consumption five million times easier.

well it's not in 10s, so not metric
it could be seen as imperial as it was the accepted method of measuring time across the empire :salute:

Seconds are metric, minutes and hours are imperial.

Well they should be, any how.

Fair point hels re: application of a measure.

However, it can't be co-incidence that there are 24 hours in a day, the circumfrence of the earth is 24,000 miles and the earth rotates at 1000mph - give or take.

Or am I being stupid under the influence of alcohol and could these parameters be changed to different units of measurement and still correlate? Were hours and miles thought of at the same time?

On a different subject, it also amazes me when the earth, sun and moon align perfectly to form solar and lunar eclipse.

the circumfrence of the earth is 24,000

Closer to 25,000 miles, so I think you may just be seeing things.

And it's pretty obvious where the month measure originates...

IIRC it's neither metric or imperial, but Babylonian.
You count count up to 60 on your hands rather than 10 (or 12 if you're from Norfolk) if you're a Babylonian.

//Edit bollocks, didn't see the ox fly over earlier.

You can't count up to 1023 on your hands - in binary.

Is metric decimal by definition? Or just convention?

And yes the only reason you think the earth rotates at 1000mph is because someone kindly rounded it up to your nice round decimal number.

Closer to 900mph.

surely rotation should be in rpm

if mph, then it'll depend on what latitude you are, and whether you are running quickly eastwards.

I'm not sure but I know it's wrong when people at work write 9.30 instead of 9:30 as their time of arrival.

neither, and it's not constant either.

is that cause they should be in by 9 😉

Time is an illusion.

Lunchtime, doubly so.

Also what about degrees C and Kelvin. Which one of those is metric?

surely rotation should be in rpm

Because it would be 1/1440 of a revolution per min.

neither, and it's not constant either.

Aye, surely that throws a bit of a spanner in the works?

Their [url= http://www.wiggle.co.uk/time-rxrs-ulteam-black-label-carbon-module/ ]frames[/url] come in XS,S,M,L and XL. No mention of inches or cms, so neither?

(They're french though so prob metric???)

Time is an illusion.

Lunchtime, doubly so.

There's a man who knows where his towel is.

Metric and Imperial aren't the only two measurement systems (ie. a given measurement doesn't [i]have [/i]to be one or the other), they're just what we're used to here.

Miles / kilometres / furlongs / parsecs / short-wheelbase-Landrover-lengths per hour are all valid, because they're all measures of distance (or displacement) over time. The two sides of the equation don't have to be related; I can get a pint of beer served at 4'C and pay for both my Imperial pint and 60 litres of diesel with Metric pounds and new pence.

Also what about degrees C and Kelvin. Which one of those is metric?

Both are, I believe. They're different scales but both measured in Metric degrees.

Rotation should be in radians/second, in the SI system.. but that's another system 🙂

Are you sure? I always thought that the SI system was all metric. 😉 I may be wrong though.

One minute of Latitude=one Nautical Mile... 😉

If it is metric then MPH is a guff combo if imperial then KPH is equally as dumb.

neither combo is dumb as the hour isn't whats being measured, its the number of things that happen in an hour. It doesn't matter whether its metric or imperial because theres only one hour in the measure. So its miles per 1, or kilometres per 1.

Anything you have after the 'per' is only one of: per day, per person, per kitten. So even if that thing is a metric or imperial unit - per lb, per ton its still wouldn't matter if you mix and match

What I find dumb is getting fuel economy measured either completely in metric or imperial - miles per gallon or kilometres per litre. The only figure that really means anything in the uk in miles per litre, MPG is pretty meaningless indication of economy as nobody knows what gallon costs any more. Perhaps mp£ would be even more useful. Or maybe just upsetting if you learn that your 50mpg car returns less than 10mp£

Time is an abstract concept invented to try and give order to occurrences (concepts or measurements of designated events), and to define and control the movement of people, and therefore exists purely on it's own outside of metric and imperial and other such limiting factors.

Sumerian, but only for half the year

But time is relative anyway, really depends who is measuring it, how they are measuring it and in relation to what they are measuring

Or something like that

I have often wondered if time is relative, space is relative, sound is relative, size is relative do we even exist if everything is relative how would we know

Why is the day divided into 24 hours, and hours divided into 60 minutes? Why not 10 hours per day, and 100 minutes per hour (cos fingers and toes can be used then to count time). I never understood that one.

Why is the day divided into 24 hours, and hours divided into 60 minutes? Why not 10 hours per day, and 100 minutes per hour (cos fingers and toes can be used then to count time). I never understood that one.

You can divide 24 by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24. That may have been useful for some reason.

From wiki

Since 1967, the second has been defined to be

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.

HTH.

From Wikipedia, for what it's worth:

The hour was originally defined in ancient civilizations (including those of Egypt,[2] Sumer, India, and China) as either one twelfth of the time between sunrise and sunset or one twenty-fourth of a full day[citation needed].[dubious – discuss]
In either case the division reflected the widespread use of a duodecimal numbering system. The importance of 12 has been attributed to the number of lunar cycles in a year.

Doesn't 60 minutes and seconds come from right angled triangles? A 3,4,5 triangle gives a right angle used for construction and multiply together to make 60.

Are you sure? I always thought that the SI system was all metric. I may be wrong though.

Yes but they don't use rpm as a measure of rotation. Revolutions per second perhaps or Hz, but it's usually radians/second for angular velocity ime. Same thing, only a factor of 2xpi different 🙂

But yes 12 is a much more useful number than 10 if you are not writing the numbers down and if you don't have decmials. Start off with 10 of something you can only halve it once before getting into difficulties - if you don't use decmials or fractions.

I think it must be imperial. Its not multiples of 10 (ok seconds are).

24 hours in a day! 60 minutes in an hour. it must be imperial.

If it were metric there would be 100 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 10 seconds in minute.

I can't work out what a metric second would be but when they change it to metric, our wages are in for a shock!

Well, I'm on a train now, so if you are sitting at home reading this, then you are ageing faster than me. But are you ageing imperially or metrically?

[url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time#France ]The Motherland introduced metric time in 1793.[/url]

But it was rather fiddly, invited ridicule from the Brits (plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...) and never caught on. The only traces you would hear of it these days are Émile Zola's 'Germinale' and Lobster 'Thermidor' both of which are named after their cranky secular names for months.