2008-08-18

What time is it?

Is it midnight or noon?

That is often the question that arises from people dealing in time zones outside of the USA that use 24 hours to signify a day's hours (instead of the USA using two 12 hour segments in a day), when someone says at "12 o'clock".

Confusion. It seems that much of this world creates confusion from lack of consistency. Different measurement systems of all sorts (time, weight, liquid, year, etc.) allow for understanding that interface with less depth and thus results in barriers to knowledge.

How many hours are in a day? That's obvious. 24. Ask a child that in the USA while they are learning about time, and the answer may surprise you. It seems you have to unlearn what you know due to divergent systems.

Many thanks to Pete Boardman's www.24hourtime.info site for exemplifying the use of 24 hour measurement clocks.

So why deal with confusion of a 12 clock? Is it because people have a hard time counting past 12? I think not. Well, one answer is because we have to. Or do we? We can adopt whatever time counting system we want.

Why do you think the military uses a 24 hour system?

Don't even get me started on Daylight Savings Time.

Give me 24 hours in a day, the reality, instead of splitting the day into 2 parts of 12 which makes one feel like there is less time in the day. I'd rather keep with the natural rhythms of the solar system.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

OK - so France has 'officially' adopted 24 hour time - on all public timetables such as transport and Public Meetings. Great idea in French because it sounds so sexy to say 'Il est dix-huit heures' instead of its Eighteen hundred hours what ever that is supposed to mean?
Even in French it's still okay to say 'Il est six heures du soir' - just in case mental math is still a challenge.