ANSWERS: 6
  • Hmm - this is a great question! My first thought is that ancient civilizations noticed the equinoxes - the two days of the year when there are exactly 12 hours of daylight and darkness each. I would think it evolved from this observation. In any event, I am very confident that the lengths of days and years was derived astronomically.
  • I DID, You got a problem with it? LOL
  • This requires quite a lengthy explanation so I'll try to condense this as much as possible from the source I found: The Egyptians had subdivided daytime and nighttime into twelve hours each since at least 2000 BC, hence their hours varied seasonally. The Hellenistic astronomers Hipparchus (c. 150 BC) and Ptolemy (c. AD 150) subdivided the day sexagesimally and also used a mean hour (1⁄24 day), but did not use distinctly named smaller units of time. Instead they used simple fractions of an hour. The day was subdivided sexagesimally, that is by 1⁄60, by 1⁄60 of that, by 1⁄60 of that, etc., to at least six places after the sexagesimal point by the Babylonians after 300 BC, but they did not sexagesimally subdivide smaller units of time. For example, six fractional sexagesimal places of a day was used in their specification of the length of the year, although they were unable to measure such a small fraction of a day in real time. The second first became measurable with the development of pendulum clocks keeping mean time (as opposed to the apparent time displayed by sundials), specifically in 1670 when William Clement added a seconds pendulum to the original pendulum clock of Christian Huygens. The seconds pendulum has a period of two seconds, one second for a swing forward and one second for a swing back, enabling the longcase clock incorporating it to tick seconds. From this time, a second hand that rotated once per minute in a small subdial began to be added to the clock faces of precision clocks. Much more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
  • Specifically, Lenny Horowitz from the south end of the Bronx. He and his buddy Vinnie were bowling, and divided the average time it took the ball to strike the pins by two. This became the second. Between rounds, they figured that it took about 60 of the ball rollings to get a beer, so when Lenny asked Vinnie to get a round of beers, Vinnie said "back in a minute" hence the timing of the minute. During this match, Vinnie's ex girl freind showed up and started yelling at him. When she left Lenny asked Vinnie if everything wwas OK, and Vinnie said "OWWWA, my ears hurt now". So the hour (or OWWWA) is based on the time it takes for an ex to yell at a person in a bowling alley. I could be wrong.
  • The day is the easy one Consider the orbit of the earth around the sun; There are 4 cardinal points in the solar year. aphelion (summer) Perihelion (winter) Vernal Equinox (spring) Autumnal Equinox (fall) The time between two adjacent points a one quarter of the orbit. One quarter of the solar year. Counting sunrises for a year yealded approx 365 When graphing the year on a clay tablet a circle with two lines across left a symbol for the year. Each quadrent was inscribed with 90 tick marks giving a the circle 360 segments. On equinox days 1/2 daylight and 1/2 dark and the same graphic symbol was used noon was represented as the first quadrent. Measuring the angular displacement of the sun above the horizon in 15 degree segments give a circule graph of 24 15 degree segments. (6 per quadrant) Submitted

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