this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Why do we use base 60 for time and base 10 for everything else. Why has no one decided to integrate it. (self.showerthoughts)
submitted 1 year ago by atrax to c/showerthoughts
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Thought of this in the shower this morning, if anyone has an answer I'd be very interested!

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You hurt my brain …… 🤕 Exactly why base 60.

(Yeh. Geometry is also base 60)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Fun fact: base 60 was adopted by the Babylonians for two major reasons:

  • It splits evenly in common fractions, such as halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths...
  • The Babylonians used a finger-counting method where the left thumb scrolled across each phalanx of the finger (giving a core base 12) and each of the other left fingers was used to keep track of how many rounds of twelve had been counted (hence 12 times 5 = 60)