The clock evolved out of the sundial. 12 hours on the clock makes more sense if you think of it that way.
The U.S. 12h clock is stupid: 12PM + 1h = 1PM
If you don't use a 24h clock at least do it like the Japanese, who also use the 12h clock and have: 0:00 PM + 1h = 1:00 PM
that just moves the weird math, because 11:00 + 1h = 00:00... The fact that clocks are a circle means there is some weird math like this happening somewhere no matter the system.
Not really 11:00 AM +1h becomes 00:00 PM, and vice versa. PM and AM are different prefixes/systems/units. Much simpler to understand IMO. 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM would no longer exist, you just convert them from PM to AM or back when you reach them and set the numbers to 00 again.
This is basically the same system as the regular 12:00 clock except noon and midnight are 00:00 instead of 12:00.
Seems functionality the same to me.
24 hour is the only way. If only I could convince people to stay saying "15 O'Clock". That would be neato. People know what it is, just not used to it
turns out Americans really love the modulo operation, no wonder programmers are paid so well there
The sound of Babylonian growling intensifies... (Babylonian / Sumerian cultures used the base 12/60 system)
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.
Reminds me of the collective confusion in english class when they taught us that 12:15 am is in the night and 12:15 pm is at lunchtime.
Imo anyone using 12:XX am for midnight for the sake of "symmetry" with 12:XX pm or whatever is adding pointless complications on top of the already pointless am/pm system. Midnight has no reason to not be 00:XX am in that system
It ain't about symmetry or pointless complications. It's about how many numbers can you get on a watch face and have it be easily legible. Yes, I know there are digital watches these days. But some people don't like them and some of us need those analog faces. As an old medic, digital watches absolutely suck at timing things like BP or respiration's. Neither me or my patient had time for that digital watch to zero so I could get a BP in 15 seconds. Ten's of thousands of EMS people and nurses in general are wearing 12 our analog watches around the world right now.
Now my run reports were all done n 24 hour time because the little boxes on those paper run reports were tiny and often filled out in a hurry. So 24 hour time was more legible and clear to anyone reading the report.
Besides, can you not look out a window to see if the sun is up or not? That will tell you all you need to know to understand how to use 12 hour time.
Its not about understanding it. Its about using it. I cannot tell you the number of times I had set an alarm 12 hours off before switching to 24 hour time. After I switched it never happened again.
Besides 24 is divisible by 12 so you can just double up the numbers on an analog clock. I have an analog watch with 24 hour face that looks similar to this:
Idk, I get your arguments but I've seen quite a lot of beautiful watch faces with small 24 hours numbers under the 12 hours one. Of course it works best with the big ones, but that seems to be in fashion these days.
I have no inherent issues with using or understanding 12 hours time, I just think it is actually adding complexity to something that is already pretty much perfect, for reasons that are mostly cultural nowadays (you've gotta admit that your point about hospital workers, while very valid, is still kinda isolated. Plus when I was wearing my watch with a 12 hours face daily I just did the x2 multiplication in my head).
Also there's a reason basically all militaries use 24 hours, and I don't think it's because they think highly of their average soldier's intellect.
For an analog clock the reason for 12 hour time is that twelve divides evenly into 60 and 24 does not. Get rid of the whole 60 min/hour and 60 sec/min that make dividing a clock dial into 60 segments extremely useful and then we can talk about why there are twelve hours on it.
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.
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.
It’s a lot of different things it’s design is based on the sundial, we already had base 12 time
Wikipedia page for base 12, the origin is a fun read and while I can’t say it’s all accurate, the parts I know are
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.
why has all this worked just fine for a century and suddenly gen Z can't make sense of it? do you guys not ever stop to wonder if maybe the devices are making you stupid?
Pretty short-sighted take. Sure, they worked for centuries, and still work today. Lots of things worked for centuries, still worked, and were still replaced by a better thing. Henry Ford famously said that, if he asked the consumers what they wanted, they'd have said faster horses. Just because something works doesn't mean it's the best way, or the way that makes the most sense. Change can be scary, but it's not inherently bad.
I'm actually a millennial and when I first read this post, it occurred to me I didn't really "get" why clocks were 12 hours. I think years ago, I had seen a video on it, but for the most part, I didn't have a working knowledge.
The fact is, we take a lot of things for granted, everything from mundane things "Why do clocks have 12 hours?" through to complex ideas. "What do LEDs light up?"
This post (the OP) reflects the opposite of what you're suggesting, that the devices are making people stupid. This post is the start to curiosity. I suspect the author likely took time to look up exactly why clocks have twelve hours, and by extension likely caused many people who viewed it to do the same (myself included actually).
Device exposure has it's problems, certainly, but I don't see this specific post as an example.
You fools need to submit to the 4 simultaneous separate 24 hour days within a 4-corner (as in a 4-corner classroom) rotation of Earth.
"There is no teacher on Earth qualified to teach Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous 4- Day Rotating Time Cube Creation Principle, and therefore, there is no teacher on Earth worthy of being called a certified teacher."
-Gene Ray, Visionary
The twelve comes from the babylonians, which counted the segments of four fingers with their thumb. So each hand could count to 12, which is far more useful than 10 as a base, since it can be divided by {1,2,3,4,6}.
Aand that's Numberwang!
This joke has lived in my head quietly for at least a decade.
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
The day starts at zero, the only way that makes sense.
And that's why the way that am/pm is indicated is fucking lunatic.
Well, it's still a far plan than the time the French tried to force time into base 10......
Which might have been the first documented demonstration of the saying "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."
They don't know how to switch bases
🤣😂🤣
Gilgamesh joins the chat. The Sumerians and the duodecimal system for time keeping.
"The day starts at night" sounds silly because it seems to be a contradiction. But really, how else could it be?
Either, day starts at day ... but then it was already day. Or, day starts at night ... unless we come up with additional entities like dusk or dawn.
And since we haven't introduced them yet, day has to start at night, as a necessity.
Of course the actual silly thing is that it's still night right after day has started.
Memes related to mathematics.
Rules:
1: Memes must be related to mathematics in some way.
2: No bigotry of any kind.
