this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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Math Memes

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[–] frezik@midwest.social 21 points 1 day ago

The clock evolved out of the sundial. 12 hours on the clock makes more sense if you think of it that way.

[–] Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The sound of Babylonian growling intensifies... (Babylonian / Sumerian cultures used the base 12/60 system)

And it remains a sensible system that we rejected because of the 'superiority' of the Decimal system.

The Mesopotamian System can reasonably be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, and 60. All without fractions!

Even the much-vaunted Greeks of antiquity lifted wholesale from the peoples of the fertile crescent- it's why we still use 360 degrees to measure circles.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 42 points 2 days ago (2 children)
[–] volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 12 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Reminds me of the collective confusion in english class when they taught us that 12:15 am is in the night and 12:15 pm is at lunchtime.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Imo anyone using 12:XX am for midnight for the sake of "symmetry" with 12:XX pm or whatever is adding pointless complications on top of the already pointless am/pm system. Midnight has no reason to not be 00:XX am in that system

[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It ain't about symmetry or pointless complications. It's about how many numbers can you get on a watch face and have it be easily legible. Yes, I know there are digital watches these days. But some people don't like them and some of us need those analog faces. As an old medic, digital watches absolutely suck at timing things like BP or respiration's. Neither me or my patient had time for that digital watch to zero so I could get a BP in 15 seconds. Ten's of thousands of EMS people and nurses in general are wearing 12 our analog watches around the world right now.

Now my run reports were all done n 24 hour time because the little boxes on those paper run reports were tiny and often filled out in a hurry. So 24 hour time was more legible and clear to anyone reading the report.

Besides, can you not look out a window to see if the sun is up or not? That will tell you all you need to know to understand how to use 12 hour time.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

Its not about understanding it. Its about using it. I cannot tell you the number of times I had set an alarm 12 hours off before switching to 24 hour time. After I switched it never happened again.

Besides 24 is divisible by 12 so you can just double up the numbers on an analog clock. I have an analog watch with 24 hour face that looks similar to this:

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Idk, I get your arguments but I've seen quite a lot of beautiful watch faces with small 24 hours numbers under the 12 hours one. Of course it works best with the big ones, but that seems to be in fashion these days.

I have no inherent issues with using or understanding 12 hours time, I just think it is actually adding complexity to something that is already pretty much perfect, for reasons that are mostly cultural nowadays (you've gotta admit that your point about hospital workers, while very valid, is still kinda isolated. Plus when I was wearing my watch with a 12 hours face daily I just did the x2 multiplication in my head).
Also there's a reason basically all militaries use 24 hours, and I don't think it's because they think highly of their average soldier's intellect.

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[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (2 children)

The U.S. 12h clock is stupid: 12PM + 1h = 1PM

If you don't use a 24h clock at least do it like the Japanese, who also use the 12h clock and have: 0:00 PM + 1h = 1:00 PM

[–] zaknenou@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

turns out Americans really love the modulo operation, no wonder programmers are paid so well there

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

that just moves the weird math, because 11:00 + 1h = 00:00... The fact that clocks are a circle means there is some weird math like this happening somewhere no matter the system.

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not really 11:00 AM +1h becomes 00:00 PM, and vice versa. PM and AM are different prefixes/systems/units. Much simpler to understand IMO. 12:00 AM and 12:00 PM would no longer exist, you just convert them from PM to AM or back when you reach them and set the numbers to 00 again.

[–] MisterFrog@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

This is basically the same system as the regular 12:00 clock except noon and midnight are 00:00 instead of 12:00.

Seems functionality the same to me.

24 hour is the only way. If only I could convince people to stay saying "15 O'Clock". That would be neato. People know what it is, just not used to it

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

It’s a lot of different things it’s design is based on the sundial, we already had base 12 time

Wikipedia page for base 12, the origin is a fun read and while I can’t say it’s all accurate, the parts I know are

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal

[–] pseudo@jlai.lu 39 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Actually that is not funny to make fun of thing you don't understand.

A clock is a marvel using a plan to represent both numerically and in volume the time passing in an infinitly précise manner as it is continuous. Human reading precision can be chose at the level of the hour, the minute of the second. The 12-base allow a reading of the twelveths of the time period, the thirds, the halves and the quarters. The use of a circle make it possible to use it as a chronometer at any given start and follow the passing of time as your society see it.

That is just the data representation part!

The clock is also a marvel of ingeneering in the backend with very complex mecanism giving it a excellent precision and the abillity to run on many many different type of power.

[–] KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 2 days ago (5 children)

the most impressive thing to me is that people managed to standardize and zero in a precise "second" especially back when seconds were kept by mechanical means. I wonder how they went about ensuring it.

[–] alsimoneau@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago (5 children)

A 1m pendulum has a 1 second half-period.

is it not dependent on mass at all? It's possible given that this is the metric system that this is actually just a convenient retroactive truth about meters. I suppose it wouldn't necessarily be, but then you're accounting for gravity as well, which means you're going to need a pretty effective approximation there. As well as a way to account for any mechanical losses as well.

I'm not sure the metric system even existed when we developed the first mechanical time keeping devices.

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[–] ech@lemm.ee 226 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (20 children)

The day starts at zero, not 12. 12 is "Noon" ie halfway through the day. The clock starts at 12 because it's more practical than inscribing 24 divisions in a circle. And the 6 doesn't "mean 30", it's simply the hour marking at the bottom of the circle. Finally, the 12 hour clock was invented after the 24 hour day, not the other way around.

And inb4 "I bet you're fun at parties". I'm all for "this logic is ridiculous" jabs, but this is just misrepresenting everything to make it sound stupid. Everything sounds stupid when you purposefully get it wrong.

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 99 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Personally, I enjoy this kind of discussion at parties.

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[–] lost_screwdriver@thelemmy.club 20 points 2 days ago

The twelve comes from the babylonians, which counted the segments of four fingers with their thumb. So each hand could count to 12, which is far more useful than 10 as a base, since it can be divided by {1,2,3,4,6}.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (10 children)

You fools need to submit to the 4 simultaneous separate 24 hour days within a 4-corner (as in a 4-corner classroom) rotation of Earth.

"There is no teacher on Earth qualified to teach Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous 4- Day Rotating Time Cube Creation Principle, and therefore, there is no teacher on Earth worthy of being called a certified teacher."

-Gene Ray, Visionary

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[–] Hupf@feddit.org 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 day ago

This joke has lived in my head quietly for at least a decade.

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[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago

They don't know how to switch bases

🤣😂🤣

[–] not_IO@lemmy.blahaj.zone 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

ever think about how 5 is 1/12th of 60? that means putting 5 min and 1h on top of each other is genius imo. because there are 12 times more minutes in an hour then there are hours in a day

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[–] zqps@sh.itjust.works 32 points 2 days ago (11 children)

The day starts at zero, the only way that makes sense.

And that's why the way that am/pm is indicated is fucking lunatic.

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[–] El_guapazo@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Gilgamesh joins the chat. The Sumerians and the duodecimal system for time keeping.

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[–] bluewing@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Well, it's still a far plan than the time the French tried to force time into base 10......

Which might have been the first documented demonstration of the saying "The French follow no one. And no one follows the French."

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