milisecond
microsecond
nanosecond
sounds metric to me
There are other scientific methods of measuring time. For instance, the astronomers you mention in the OP often use something called the Julian day, which is a continuous count of days and fractions of a day since 12:00 Noon GMT on January 1 of four thousand and some oddd BC. So the current Julian Day would be something like 2453178.28663 (that’s not the exact number, just the sort of thing it would look like). Incidentally, it starts at noon, not midnight, because it’s primarily used by astronomers who don’t want the day to change in the middle of their observations. Which is probably not a big comfort to all the astronomers in Hawaii who are close to opposite GMT.
One attempt at “decimal time” (or marketing scheme, depending on your point of view) was the creation of “internet time”, aka “.beats”, by Swatch. You can find watches displaying that type of time measurement in Swatch stores or at the Swatch website. This concept was “founded” on 23 October 1998. The idea being that Swatch watches showing internet time would be the same all over the world, so Person A in Albania could tell Person B in Uruguay “let’s get on IM @732”.
The principle:
Time 0 (@000) is midnight BMT (Biel Mean Time, where Biel, Switzerland is the location of the Swatch Headquarters; equivalent to Central European Wintertime). The day is divided into 1000 “.beats” of 1 minute 26.4 seconds = 86.4 seconds. 12 noon BMT would be @500 .beats.
The above information came from the Swatch website, http://www.swatch.com (look under “.beats” or “Internet time”.)
We might also point out that theoretical physicists are fond of expressing values of time in “Planck times” which are defined as the time it takes light to traverse the Planck length; or about 5 x 10^-44 seconds.
See r_k,
A quibble is 1 vibration of a quartz crystal.
A second is 1/9,192,631,770 of the vibration of a cesium atom.
Medium aside, that seems to me to be reducing complication.
My comprehension is that since over time we’ve used the second as a standard, to change that now definately would introduce the need to rewrite much that is already understood and adequate.
But I, again in my civilian blinders, would assume that could we start from scratch, some unit other than the second would be better suited for the aforementioned communities and the calculations they require.
Granted, it’s served us well but it reminds me of measuring atomic blasts by the spearpoint.
Do you realize that a meter is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299792458 seconds? And that a Kelvin is defined as 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water? Why are you singling out seconds to blame for unweildy definitions?
It was their time.
I love metric time ten times better.
A nitpick and a correction: The gram isn’t defined; the kilogram is. And its definition has nothing to do with the second. A kilogram is defined as the mass of the standard kilogram.
You are correct about the definition of the kilogram; I apologize. However, I don’t agree with your nitpick. The gram is too defined. It’s defined as one-thousandth of a kilogram, and so it’s (indirectly) defined in terms of whatever the kilogram is defined in terms of.
Physical objects for standards are no long the the high authority. The kilogram is defined as the mass of 1 litre of water at STP. The liter is defined as 1 cubic decimeter. The meter is defined by wavelength of light at a specific frequency which is measured in seconds.
I thought the deal was one gram equals one cubic centimeter of water (aka one milliliter) at sea level air pressure at water’s maximum density, approx. 4 degrees Celcius.
Padeye and Enola Straight, please read Mandarax’s cite. You’ll see that you would have been correct, before 1889. If you don’t trust a .gov site, here’s one from a .edu site.
In one sense, we do use a partly decimal time system. Virtually all timeclocks at businesses in the US measure “decimal hours”: 8:30 A.M. is 8.5 hours, 10:15 would be 10.25 hourse, etc. This is for the sake of payroll calculating wages at an hourly rate.
From The Straight Dope, by the illustrious Cecil Adams, as recorded within Who decided the day should be divided into 24 hours?, we are informed that:
think astroseconds from transformers.
On Battlestar:Galactica, they threw around time units like centons and microns.
And look how they turned out!