Reposting bc I dun goofed before

  • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Why would metric time still use the same seconds? Surely it’d be a different unit that was a nice multiple of 10

    • Rob Bos@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Thr second is already a metric SI unit. A day happens to be 86.4 kiloseconds. I’m not sure why that is weird.

      Redefining the second would be a lot of work for no real benefit.

      Hours, days, weeks are not metric, you wouldn’t really say kiloday or centiday.

        • Flumpkin@slrpnk.net
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          10 months ago

          French Republican calendar time system used in France from 1794 to 1800, during the French Revolution, which divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds (100000 decimal seconds per day)

      • gazter@aussie.zone
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        10 months ago

        We’re looking at this the wrong way. The problem is the number of seconds not dividing neatly into the period of the day. You’re right, adjusting the length of a second is impractical, so let’s look at our other options here.

        • korfuri@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          The main issue is that the length of a day is not actually constant. Leap second occur (in either direction) which mean that a day is sometimes one second shorter or longer. Timezones and DST also can make a day a whole hour longer or shorter.

          Seconds are a unit for physical measurement. They’re always the same length. Minutes, days, weeks, months, years, etc are imprecise shortcuts that are convenient for our society but this convenience sometimes comes at the price of being bonkers units from the physics standpoint.

      • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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        10 months ago

        Oh, so you are saying that overhauling a system that has been used for millennia in favor of one that is a bit more logical for niche cases isn’t worth it on large scales?

        • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Saying that the metric system is a bit more logical than imperial units for niche cases is like saying that LeBron James is slightly better than my 70yo mom at very specific aspects of basketball 🙄

    • Magister@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      60 is good because you can divide it by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 which is convenient

      • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        “The second […] is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.[1]”

        • Klear@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Those definitions are picked to be as immutable, unambiguous and easily replicated in a lab as possible, but have nothing to do why a second is defined like that.

          But did you know that if you tie exactly 1m of string to some heavy object, it will swing once per second?