----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 9:20
AM
Subject: [USMA:35671] Re: decimal
time
On 2006 Jan 15 , at 9:38 AM, Linda D. Bergeron wrote:
1. The second must be the SI second.
2. The day must be the mean solar day.
3. The year must be the calendar
year
I agree that one CANNOT change the length of the day or the year, and
SHOULD NOT try to change the length of the SI second, but there is no reason
we could not change the length of the minute or the hour, or for that matter,
abandon the minute and the hour in favor of some other unit or
units.
Those other units could be selected to be simple (possibly decimal)
multiples of the second (or submultiples of the day). Or those "other units"
could simply be existing SI multiples, such as the kilosecond.
I'm afraid that any such new set of civil time units would be at least as
complex as the present 60 seconds to the minute, 60 minutes to the hour, 24
hours to the day. But it IS possible to devise a new usable set of civil time
units.
A characteristic of a possible new "set" could be that it contains
only one other unit between the second and the day. In SI, multiples of the
basic units are generally 1000 times the next smaller unit. Why is it
necessary to have the day divided into only 24 hours and then have that
further subdivided into still another unit only one sixtieth of the hour?
Instead of having two units between the day and the second, why not just
one?
The kilosecond fits the bill rather nicely. There are 1000 s in 1 ks and
there are 86.4 ks in 1 day. (No minutes or hours at all.) There are only two
steps between the day and the second, with only two factors to know, and at
least one of those factors is simple.
The hectosecond might also be used but the hecto prefix is less commonly
used and less popular than kilo. There would be 864 hectoseconds in a day and
100 seconds in a hectosecond. (Also with no minutes or hours.) Personally I
prefer the kilosecond.
Regards,
Bill
Hooper
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Go Metric America! Or
get left behind!
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