• Ech@lemm.ee
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    30 days ago

    The day starts at zero, not 12. 12 is “Noon” ie halfway through the day. The clock starts at 12 because it’s more practical than inscribing 24 divisions in a circle. And the 6 doesn’t “mean 30”, it’s simply the hour marking at the bottom of the circle. Finally, the 12 hour clock was invented after the 24 hour day, not the other way around.

    And inb4 “I bet you’re fun at parties”. I’m all for “this logic is ridiculous” jabs, but this is just misrepresenting everything to make it sound stupid. Everything sounds stupid when you purposefully get it wrong.

    • Samskara@sh.itjust.works
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      29 days ago

      The clock is two dials at the same time superimposed on another. There’s one 12 hour dial and one 60 minute dial. To save space and material they are combined into one.

    • Mog_fanatic@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      I mean the day does start at “the 12” on the face of the clock. And 30 minutes is at the 6 on the clock. I get what you’re saying but come on they both make sense.

      You must be fun at parties 😉 jk I’d party with you! I’m not very fun at parties tho.

    • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      The clock starts at 12 and not 0 because humanity didn’t have the concept of 0 when we invented the 12 hour clock

      • lnxtx (xe/xem/xyr)@feddit.nl
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        30 days ago

        The most unlogical thing. If it starts at 12 AM, the next hour is 1 PM, right?
        I prefer midnight and noon, or a 24h clock.

    • kandoh@reddthat.com
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      29 days ago

      I heard they do it that way because they count using their thumb and their finger joints, instead of their individual fingers.

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
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    29 days ago

    Actually that is not funny to make fun of thing you don’t understand.

    A clock is a marvel using a plan to represent both numerically and in volume the time passing in an infinitly précise manner as it is continuous. Human reading precision can be chose at the level of the hour, the minute of the second. The 12-base allow a reading of the twelveths of the time period, the thirds, the halves and the quarters. The use of a circle make it possible to use it as a chronometer at any given start and follow the passing of time as your society see it.

    That is just the data representation part!

    The clock is also a marvel of ingeneering in the backend with very complex mecanism giving it a excellent precision and the abillity to run on many many different type of power.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      29 days ago

      the most impressive thing to me is that people managed to standardize and zero in a precise “second” especially back when seconds were kept by mechanical means. I wonder how they went about ensuring it.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          27 days ago

          is it not dependent on mass at all? It’s possible given that this is the metric system that this is actually just a convenient retroactive truth about meters. I suppose it wouldn’t necessarily be, but then you’re accounting for gravity as well, which means you’re going to need a pretty effective approximation there. As well as a way to account for any mechanical losses as well.

          I’m not sure the metric system even existed when we developed the first mechanical time keeping devices.

          • alsimoneau@lemmy.ca
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            27 days ago

            The mass cancels out.

            I don’t know if it’s purely a coincidence. The meter comes from the Earth’s circumference (1/10 000 000 of the pole-equator distance) and I believe the second is much older, which points to a coincidence.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              26 days ago

              it makes sense that the mass does cancel out, it is a change of potential and kinetic energy at all, i suppose i’m just conflating more complicated things with it lol.

              it’s pretty likely to be a coincidence, but if i had to guess it’s a “lucky coincidence” one that was intentionally chosen because of it’s convenience. Rather than by pure happenstance. There’s not a particularly good reason 1 meter needs to be 1/10000000 the pole equator distance for example. So that would be pretty easy to reverse fudge nicely.

  • Jhogenbaum@leminal.space
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    29 days ago

    The sound of Babylonian growling intensifies… (Babylonian / Sumerian cultures used the base 12/60 system)

    • PyroNeurosis@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      28 days ago

      And it remains a sensible system that we rejected because of the ‘superiority’ of the Decimal system.

      The Mesopotamian System can reasonably be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. All without fractions!

      Even the much-vaunted Greeks of antiquity lifted wholesale from the peoples of the fertile crescent- it’s why we still use 360 degrees to measure circles.

  • not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    29 days ago

    ever think about how 5 is 1/12th of 60? that means putting 5 min and 1h on top of each other is genius imo. because there are 12 times more minutes in an hour then there are hours in a day

    • ladicius@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      there are 12 times more minutes in an hour then there are hours in a day

      24 x 12 is 60? You are a weird mathematician.

      • not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        29 days ago

        yeahur right i meant to to say there are 5 yimes more minutes in an hour then there are hours in half a day xD