Ed Davies scripsit:
If only the 24:00 for end of day notation wasn't in the way we could look at positive leap seconds as just being the result of deeming certain days to be a second longer than most and just use 24:00:00. We wouldn't have to muck with the lengths of any of the hours or minutes within that day.
John Cowan replied:
That amounts to saying that some days have 24 hours, whereas others have 25 hours, 24 of them being 3600 seconds long and the 25th being 1 second long. IMHO that is worse.
No, it amounts to saying that some days are 24 hours and 1 second long. When you're half a second from the end of such a day you are 24 hours, zero minutes and half a second from the start. If you had a 1'6" piece of string you wouldn't say it's a two foot piece of string but the second foot is only 152.4 mm long. (Well, I think you wouldn't, though I think some politicians might.) As Rob has just pointed out in a parallel thread 23:59:60.5 and 24:00:00.5 can be treated as equivalent. It just seems to me that the second of these notations fits in with the normal use of sexagesimal somewhat better. Ed.
