2002-03-31 I thought the day was actually shorter than 24 h. The day is 23 h 56 min long. Something like that. So, the true day is 4 min shorter than the 24 h day.
John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barbara and/or Bill Hooper" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, 2002-03-31 07:54 Subject: [USMA:19167] Re: kWh and time definition > on 3/27/2002 1:04 PM, Ma Be at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > (Regarding the definition of the second and the non-integral number of > seconds in a day or in a year...) > > The only problem is that we may not find a way to circumvent the fact that > > there are 365.xx days in a year... > > Nor can you circumvent the fact that there are not 24 hours in a day. The > average day is a bit longer than 24 hours (currently) and it fluctuates > regularly during the course of a year and irregularly over the span of many > years (so in the future the day might be shorter than 24 hours, and not > necessarily "average out"). The current extra length of the day ha required > the adding of a leap second every few years. The length of the particular > day when the leap second is added is 24:00:01 (hh:mm:ss). > > There is NO WAY that ANY time unit can be divised that is BOTH constant and, > at the same time, a simple and FIXED FRACTION of the day or the year (or > month, week, fortnight, etc.). It is impossible because NONE of the time > intervals based on motions of the earth is constant. >
