Could time be measured metrically

[Simpo Two]

foreright said:

My understanding is that 12 is useful because it's possible to count to 12 on the fingers of one hand by using your thumb to point at each of the 3 sections of the 4 other fingers. Of course, in Norfolk, a lot of people can count to 15

Well, they have enough fingers, but whether they can count that high is another matter!

[2 sMoKiN bArReLs]

annodomini2 said:

MartG said:

It would be very difficult indeed to move to a 'decimal' time system which split the day up by dividing by 10 - imagine having to redefine every scientific constant, then rewrite every textbook, rewrite every computer programme, etc. !

I don't know, many businesses employing hourly paid staff would probably love it.

I worked at a dealership where the clocking in system was hours & decimals of hours. I always found it hellish confusing.

[JB!]

Timesheets here are in decimal hours. 7hrs 30min is 7.5hr

[Gandahar]

[VeeDubBigBird]

i think the biggest issue would probably be is it worth it.

A day would still need to last the same period of time and although months would be flexible, a way of measuring seasons would be necessary.

Given the inaccuracies of the current system now might be the time to start considering the alternatives.

[wildone63]

I remember when learning about decimalisation at junior school over 40 years ago a classmate asked the teacher if time could be converted to decimal units and the teacher replied that it wouldnt be practical because every clock and watch on earth would be instantly useless.

[Jonny_]

It's a base SI unit, so all calculations with a time element (frequency, current, etc etc) rely on time in seconds. To use any other unit would introduce an extra factor that converted the new time unit back to seconds.

Totally impractical - an analogy would be trying to replace metres with a new unit called the "cocklength" - although the definition of this unit would be debated for decades...

[Halmyre]

I work flexitime and have to log my hours in decimal, so if I work 8 hours and 13 minutes I have to convert that to 8.22. We've got all this fancy software on the intranet for logging and booking our hours, and you'd think it would be a simple task for a time-booking software package to be able to do a back-end conversion from hours and minutes to decimal, but nooooooo, that would be too fking obvious; luckily I don't trust the software so I keep my own personal log of hours worked in a spreadsheet where I can put in hours and minutes and hey what do you know, it works out the decimal conversion all by itself so I can then feed it back into our gazillion pound intranet package.