Why are there 60 seconds in a minute?
Hello fellow science enthusiasts!
This week I want to discuss time! Specifically, how did we decide that a minute equals 60 seconds and an hour is 60 minutes? Especially when pretty much everything else in our society has a base system of 10.
This is a something of a long answer steeped in history, but I'll try to sum it up briefly. If you're interested, I've provided some links at the bottom where you can read more into the subject. :D
A LONG time ago the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians used math that was based on a sexagesimal system. This means everything was done with a base 12 and/or base 60 system. In fact, according to Scientific American "Although it is no longer used for general computation, the sexagesimal system is still used to measure angles, geographic coordinates and time."
Ancient civilizations such as the Babylonians and Egyptians used astronomical markers to measure time: "There's the year, which is the time it takes Earth to complete one orbit around the sun; the month, which is approximately how long it takes the moon to orbit our planet; the week, which is approximately the time between the four phases of the moon; and the day, which is the duration of one rotation of the Earth's on its axis. ... Twelve was an important number to the Sumerians, and later to the Egyptians. For example, it was the number of lunar cycles in a year and the number of constellations of the Zodiac. Day and night were each divided into 12 periods, and the 24-hour day was born. (Live Science)"
This method of measuring time stuck around for hundreds of years, spreading across Europe and the Middle East. Time was largely measured in hours by sun-dials and the stars until the middle ages when "medieval astronomers were able to apply the sexagesimal math system to the passage of time (Live Science). It wasn't until the late 14th century that mechanical clocks made an appearance and people started using minutes and seconds to measure time. This allowed legendary scientists such as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Issac Newton to "take measurements with unprecedented accuracy."
But still... why did we keep base 60 for time as opposed to base 10? The Guardian summed this up perfectly from a mathematical perspective: "The use of 12 subdivisions for day and night, with 60 for hours and minutes, turns out to be much more useful than (say) 10 and 100 if you want to avoid having to use complicated notations for parts of a day. Twelve is divisible by two, three, four, six and 12 itself - whereas 10 has only three divisers - whole numbers that divide it a whole number of times. Sixty has 12 divisers and because 60 = 5 x 12 it combines the advantages of both 10 and 12. In fact both 12 and 60 share the property that they have more divisers than any number smaller than themselves."
There you have it. Time as we know it... Because Astronomy & Math!
Cheers!
- Fliff
SOURCES:
Scientific American
The Smithsonian
Live Science
The Guardian
This week I want to discuss time! Specifically, how did we decide that a minute equals 60 seconds and an hour is 60 minutes? Especially when pretty much everything else in our society has a base system of 10.
This is a something of a long answer steeped in history, but I'll try to sum it up briefly. If you're interested, I've provided some links at the bottom where you can read more into the subject. :D
A LONG time ago the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians used math that was based on a sexagesimal system. This means everything was done with a base 12 and/or base 60 system. In fact, according to Scientific American "Although it is no longer used for general computation, the sexagesimal system is still used to measure angles, geographic coordinates and time."
Ancient civilizations such as the Babylonians and Egyptians used astronomical markers to measure time: "There's the year, which is the time it takes Earth to complete one orbit around the sun; the month, which is approximately how long it takes the moon to orbit our planet; the week, which is approximately the time between the four phases of the moon; and the day, which is the duration of one rotation of the Earth's on its axis. ... Twelve was an important number to the Sumerians, and later to the Egyptians. For example, it was the number of lunar cycles in a year and the number of constellations of the Zodiac. Day and night were each divided into 12 periods, and the 24-hour day was born. (Live Science)"
This method of measuring time stuck around for hundreds of years, spreading across Europe and the Middle East. Time was largely measured in hours by sun-dials and the stars until the middle ages when "medieval astronomers were able to apply the sexagesimal math system to the passage of time (Live Science). It wasn't until the late 14th century that mechanical clocks made an appearance and people started using minutes and seconds to measure time. This allowed legendary scientists such as Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Issac Newton to "take measurements with unprecedented accuracy."
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| Google tells me this is one of the most complicated watches ever made |
There you have it. Time as we know it... Because Astronomy & Math!
Cheers!
- Fliff
SOURCES:
Scientific American
The Smithsonian
Live Science
The Guardian
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