Holy crap, I just noticed

Holy crap, I just noticed.

Is time just a combo of both imperial and metric?

You have even units of 10, with milliseconds and centiseconds, but you also have random numbers like 60 seconds to a minute and 24 hours to a day. What is going on?

Time has Babylonian roots

60s in a minute (12*5)
60m in an hour (12*5)
24h in a day (12*2)

Our clocks originate from a society which counted in base 12, (using their thumb to point to different segments of their other fingers, of which there is 11). Maybe Babylonian like said, I can't remember.

Anything smaller than a second was created later, with the metric system.

unlike mass or length, units of time are dependent on natural phenomenon specifically to meet the needs of regular human beings, not scientists. The day corresponds to the time for the earth to rotate around its own axis. The hour is 1/24th of that time. If it were 1/10, or 1/100, it would be inconvenient in our every day lives
If that's too much for you to process, try going to a bar and ordering a suitable amount of beer in metric units. You may only use whole numbers. What you'll discoverer is that metric has the drawback of not representing human needs, which do mot scale in 10s, which is why we don't use it outside the laboratory

SI recognizes the use of units of time other than the second. The French tried to do "decimal time" where you have ten hours in a day, ten days in a week etc. but it was a massive failure. Obviously the year and month have some intrinsic meaning so there is no point in replacing them. But time measurement is very ubiquitous and hard to change. Anything that you need to measure precisely can be done in terms of seconds anyways.

you have tenths of an inch

The metre (one ten millions of distance from equator to pole) and the nautical mile (one minute of latitude) are based on nature.

>the drawback of not representing human needs, which do mot scale in 10s, which is why we don't use it outside the laboratory
>we don't use it outside the laboratory
>metric

That's the most burger thing I've read all day

>If that's too much for you to process, try going to a bar and ordering a suitable amount of beer in metric units.
I'm an europoor and I've been drinking beer in litres my whole life and never had a problem with that. Imperial (nor metric) isn't more "natural", you're just used to it.
>Obviously the year and month have some intrinsic meaning
Orbital period of Earth, orbital period of moon (more or less), lunar phases, rotation of Earth around the axis. No idea where 24 hours came from, though

The entire world except the USA is laughing at the US cukced by customary units

You can count on your fingers using 12. Three segments on each four fingers, the thumb pointing to the segment.

2x12 = 24.

Maybe if the US were to include taking on the metric system into that TTIP thing the EU would agree to sign it.

All units are equally arbitrary

>pic related
I chuckled

Babylonian math was base 60.

>The metre (one ten millions of distance from equator to pole) and the nautical mile (one minute of latitude) are based on nature.
Yes, completely arbitrary natural definitions.The meter just need to be be scaled to human portions, it doesn't need to be defined as part of nature.

>I'm an europoor and I've been drinking beer in litres my whole life and never had a problem with that. Imperial (nor metric) isn't more "natural", you're just used to it.
Incorrect, imperial units are natural because they are specificallly designed to meet human needs. If you're a beer supplier, or a specialize in any craft field, you'll quickly come to find a set of imperial units tailored to your particular trades. For instance, metric units of length compromise more than just inches, feet and yards. There are other units of length for shipwrights, shoe manufactures, etc. There are more than you could ever hope to remember, and are all useful

>"I have worked in the shoe repair trade for 50 years, and the thickness of sole leather is measured in irons. There are 48 irons in 1 inch, and the average thickness of a normal leather sole on a gents shoe is between 8 and 10 iron. This is not a measuring system that is fading into obscurity, like many others, but is very much alive, and is in general use in the shoe manufacture and repair trades. However now that we are 'Europeans', it expected that we operate in millimetres rather than irons, but it is a difficult task to change the ways of an established method , especially with the older generation. This is purely a British measuring system. I am an agent for a German tannery, and 'irons' are totally alien to them."

...

>you have tenths of an inch
There are "mils" (mili-inches) used in printed circuit board design, and every time I see them mfw is pic related.

I made a little mistake in this post. I naively simplified the meter to a matter of human need. There is also a great deal of scientific need involved, which can be expressed in three qualities

1. Availability - the meter needs to be available for measurement worldwide
2. Consistency (in time and space) - the meter must be unchanging in length at any temperature or pressure
3. I actually forget the last rule :^)

Anyways this guy is using an outdated definition of the meter It's now defined by a more "eternal method" involving the light emitted from an isotope of krypton

base 10 prefixes =/= metric
there's nothing stopping you from using base ten prefixes with imperial units

kilo-inches, say. or millimiles

then that's just a form of metric using a different definition of a base unit (inches instead of meter, miles instead of meters)
and by doing that you destroy the point of using imperial in the first place. The benefit of imperial is not just about having a human-proportioned base unit,(metric does this anyway) but about how that unit scales. I repeat, human needs to not scale in tens.

>then that's just a form of metric using a different definition of a base unit (inches instead of meter, miles instead of meters)
no, metric is the base system. the prefix system is a convenient add-on to the metric system but it's not intrinsically tied to it.

Metric is a decimal system, and that's its key selling point. If you take that way, you aren't left with much of a system at all.

Babylonian time
>Imperial

Ok mate...

>Our clocks originate from a society which counted in base 12, (using their thumb to point to different segments of their other fingers, of which there is 11)

I'm so sorry user, how did you lose a part of your finger?

I am just about one nautical millimile tall. I approve.

no, the key selling point of metric is the easy inter-convertibility of its units. 1 cm3 water = 1 mL = 1 g. 1 kcal heats 1 mL by 1 degree C. four of the most commonly used units all linked by conversion factors that are nicely defined as 1:1.

the decimal system is secondary to that.

woop. fucked up heat capacity. 1 calorie / (gC), not 1 kcal. you get hte idea though

>no, metric is the base system. the prefix system is a convenient add-on to the metric system but it's not intrinsically tied to it.
>Metric is a decimal system, and that's its key selling point. If you take that way, you aren't left with much of a system at all.
No, the key selling point of the metric system is that it uses the SAME prefixes for ALL quantities, with the consequence that 17 gram per milliliter is equivalent to 17 kilogram per liter is equivalent to 17 tons per cubic meter. Exactly what those prefixes are is secondary, but them being consistent is critical.

and that consistency is a feature of the definition of the units, not a feature of the prefix system

>not using oral b cross action