I was hesitating to post this to the group as I could get a lot of flak for it, but, since this is a *point-of-order* post I decided to risk it.
On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 15:45:28 Bill Hooper wrote: >... Your proposal for redefining the second in terms of your >decimal day requires the wholesale disruption of that good system with >no improvement in the problem areas you cite; Not so (unfortunately...)! No "disruption" of the **system** would ever occur. A "new" second would NOT involve ***redefining*** the **system** AT ALL! ONLY *SOME* **SIZES** could change! > at least no improvement >that cannot be accomplished more simply and WITHOUT changing the >defrinition and the size of the second. >... And now the biggest point-of-order of all! A definitive yes, there *would* be improvement. How so? Take a look at my example below: EVEN IF the second is NOT *redefined*, and one DOES have to use a *conversion factor* (SIC) I'd rather use percentime seconds (for instance) as it would involve MUCH less "conversion" calculations than with the current time framework: Example: Say a worker spent 1h25min on a job which pays him 8 $/h. How much money should he be paid for that amount of work? Current framework: 25/60 (1 calc) +1 (2 calcs) x8 (3 calcs) Percentime framework: 5.9 Ph (percentime hours) (no calcs, *directly* read from a percentime watch!); 1.92 $/Ph (8 x 0.24 - 1 calc) 5.9 x 1.92 (2 calcs)!!!!! In other words, it's more efficient to use percentime EVEN IF one needs to use conversion factors! This simplicity stems from the fact that in a decimal framework the worse that CAN happen is *1* "calculation" to find that conversion factor. It's the present time construct's framework of a whopping *3* number of units (h/min/s) to keep track of ONE physical property that makes the adoption of a decimal time framework all worth the while! BTW, it goes without saying that the above increase in efficiency would ALSO be true for ANY other units that are time dependent, i.e. the use of ONE conversion factor would STILL be more efficient in the end than sticking with h/min/s!!! Let's also not forget that it's actually sort of rare (or less common) that one would use time construct ONLY to the second "accuracy"!!! Suffice it to see that by looking at the world around us with salaries "per hour", speed in "per hour", other performance parameters in a "per minute" basis, etc. Therefore, it's IMPERATIVE that people realize what they'd be forgoing by NOT giving a decimal time framework a try, and this *in spite of the forcible use of ONE conversion factor* this would entail if one would use it without changing the SI system to redefine the second!... ;-) Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
