have you ever wonder "what makes a second...a second?", wayyyy off topic Options

[lubu]

I was driving home one day in my belove celica....a question popped up in my head "what makes a second, a second"??...i know there are atomic clocks that miss a second in like 1 million year but how did we even measure a second in the first place...?

Now, a day consists of 24 hours and 1hr=3600 seconds. But we could have had 12 hours in a day and keep the same duration of a second so the number of seconds would still be 3600..it just takes twice as long to move a second to a second...so how and what instument were used to measure a second??

Imagine a second's duration were 10 times faster than today than one would says "yez..my celica can do 0-60mph in abt 60 seconds.." LOL ...yep thats a minute.

[phonex98]

sure ! Why not. This from wikipedia:

Twelve

Base-12 systems (duodecimal or dozenal) have been popular because multiplication and division are easier than in base-10, with addition just as easy. 12 is a useful base because it has many factors. It is the smallest multiple of one through four and of six. We still have a special word for "dozen" and just like there is a word for 102, hundred, there is also a word for 122, gross. Base-12 could have originated from the number of knuckles in the four fingers of a hand excluding the thumb, which is used as a pointer in counting.

There are 24 hours per day, usually counted till 12 until noon (a.m.) and once again until midnight (p.m.), often further divided per 6 hours in counting (for instance in Thailand) or as switches between using terms like 'night', 'morning', 'afternoon', and 'evening', whereas other languages use such terms with durations of 3 to 9 hours often according to switches at some of the 3 hour interval marks.


Sixty

Base 60 (sexagesimal) was used by the Sumerians and their successors in Mesopotamia and survives today in our system of time (hence the division of an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds) and in our system of angular measure (a degree is divided into 60 minutes and a minute is divided into 60 seconds). 60 also has a large number of factors, including the first six counting numbers. Base-60 systems are believed to have originated through the merging of base-10 and base-12 systems.