Why Are Clocks 60 Seconds, 60 Minutes and 24 Hours? We Need a Metric Clock System

This been bugging me for a long time and comes to the forefront in the book we most recently read, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Almost everything we do and the whole metric system is based on multiples of 10, probably because we have 10 fingers (fun fact 1 in 500 are born with Polydactyly aka having an extra finger). 

If it seems completely arbitrary that we go off of this system based on 60 seconds/60 minutes/24 hours, that’s because it is: 

The Babylonians made astronomical calculations in the sexagesimal (base 60) system they inherited from the Sumerians, who developed it around 2000 B.C. Although it is unknown why 60 was chosen, it is notably convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number divisible by the first six counting numbers.

The buddies time metric system proposal is: instead of of 60 seconds/60 minutes/24 hours, we change to 100 seconds/ 100 minutes/10 hours. Would this math work out currently? No, not at all. In this method there would be 8.64 hours in a day. But that’s way too messy, so what we’ll do instead is just change the length of a second. It’s made up anyway why not change it? ‘But you can’t just change defined units of measurement Buddy, what are you stupid?’ No you’re stupid! 3 units of the metric system were changed as recently as 2019. Science is a liar sometimes.

Sorry for being defensive, back to the rant. So these units of measurement are already made up any way, so all we do is make a second a little quicker (16% faster) and make a day 100,000 seconds rather than 86,400 and just like that we got out our system all figured out. Easy peazy, lemon squeezy.

Now would changing to this system cause mass confusion and a shit load more trouble than it’s worth, yes likely. But a 3 hour work day sounds pretty nice right? A quarter of an hour being 25 minutes and a half hour being 50 minutes makes a whole lot more sense. And the watch market would love it, give a huge boom to the Rolexes and other watch makers of the world. Win-Win for everyone.

Something to think about. Also, I wrote this whole blog and realized there actually already is a metric time but it’s not nearly as cool as our idea.

P.S. This all reminds me of another theory I will bring up at a later time, why isn’t there a world clock/universal time? Fuck time zones.