Sept 16: Discrepancies of time

 

One thing that stood out to me  was that the st. andrews article mentioned that the sexagesimal system when using decimals has 3 prime factors to 60 (2, 3, and 5) which when expressed as a decimal  will be finite if the denominator has no prime divisors other than 2, 3, and 5. Therefore, in terms of time, this would be more convenient if we needed to write a fraction of time or it’s decimal as there would be more possibilities than if we had denoted an hour as 100. I too find it interesting that some theories suggest a base 60 system based on astronomical events such as the number of planets multiplied by the number of months in the year .

One of the major inconsistencies between the two articles was that the sun moves through its diameter 720 times during a day and with 12 Sumerian hours per day, we obtain 60 as a result of 720/12. However, the concept  of fixed hours in a day did not exist supposedly as mentioned in the scientific American article. The division was based on 24 equinoctial hours of 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Personally, I do like this concept as I come from a French background and we use a 24 hour clock. It helps me separate the day from the night and it avoids confusion with am or pm. 

Moreover, the scientific American article also mentions the sundial as a motivation for 12 parts. The time component could be more related to the lunar cycles in a year as the next generation sundial lended itself more towards the concept of an hour. However, an hour was not commonly understood to be 60 minutes.

Comments

  1. Erica HuangSeptember 17, 2024 at 2:25 PM

    Good observations, Zain! It would be great if you could elaborate a bit more on how these ideas connect to your own personal experiences for thinking about time, as indicated in Susan's instructions.

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  2. Zain RehmtullaOctober 12, 2024 at 8:13 PM

    See comment in paragraph "Personally, I do like this concept as I come from a French background and we use a 24 hour clock. It helps me separate the day from the night and it avoids confusion with am or pm. "

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Erica HuangNovember 5, 2024 at 10:57 AM

      Thanks for highlighting this part, Zain. I was hoping to see a little bit more elaboration. I read a bit on L’Heure Officielle. :) I'm curious if that affects how time is expressed in French, and if French-speaking people would look at a 12-hr clock and automatically translate the time to the 24 hr system. Last year, a few of my grade 8 students had trouble with this conversion!

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