2855
logical
(lemmy.world)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
2855 points (96.9% liked)
Strange Planet by Nathan W. Pyle
7078 readers
2 users here now
A community dedicated to Strange Planet comics by Nathan W. Pyle.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Care to elaborate on how base 12 would be better than base 10 in this case?
Basically it's because 12 is more divisible than 10. Factors of 10 are 1,2,5 and 10. 12 has 1,2,3,4,6 and 12. This gives more flexibility when discussing numbers. Our time is technically using base 12, which is why we can say quarter past 4 and it means a traditional whole number. That's the argument I've heard anyway
I believe this is also why we have 360 "degrees" in a circle, and not 365. The ancients hated that a year was clise to, but not exactly, 365 days. They chalked it up to the imperfection of Earth relative to the heavens. But a perfect year should be 360 days because it is divisible by every single digit number but 7.
On the matter of days in a years, there's also the idea of spliting the year into 13 months of 28 days each for a total of 364 days, closer matching the lunar cycle (and women's body). Every day of the year would always be on the same day of the week.
Then the extra day? It's world day, a global holiday for celebrating the new year, and it doesn't belong in any weekday. Sometimes we'd need an extra leap year day (just like right now with 29th February) so they would just both be world day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
Check for pros and cons.
I'm very much in favor of the 13 month system. So hard to change such things now that we don't have emperors.*
*I'm also very much in favor of not having emperors though...
The ancients actually used a 360 day calendar and a bonus week of 5-6 days at the end before the new year started.
Because 12 is more than 10 and more is better.
7.62mm is more than 5.56mm but 'muricans (fuck yeah) still chose AR-15s because freedum. Where is your God now? /s
I'm american and chose 7.62 three times in the forms of SKS, AK-47, and AK-104. Big bullet go boom.
I’ve heard before it’s because 1/3 can be represented as a whole number.
Just like feet, which can have 12 inches. But if we want to get more precise we start cutting inches into eighths for some reason 😅
old school carpenters' squares also have inches divided in 12.
I always use decimal inches wherever possible, personally. Makes so much more sense to me than "3/64" or some crap like that
A base 12 metric system is the best of all worlds. 1/3 of a cm is 0.4cm or 4.
Your way seems like the worst of all worlds. What is 0.1 feet in inches? shrugs. If you're going to use a different system to the people around you, why not use normal metric?
I said decimal inches, not decimal feet. Also, I use them personally with my own projects, not when giving measurements to other people. 4.25 inches makes more sense to me than 4 1/4 inches. I could use cm but I'm more used to inches since I live in the US. If I were to give my measurements to someone else I'd use fractions, since that is the standard here.