can anyone help me understand why it was decided that there are 60 minutes in a degree of a circle, or why we decided to call a 60th of a degree a minute, or why we picked the number 60? who decided all this and why? where did 60 come from?
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thanks thed. but it STILL doesn't explain exactly WHY a base 60 was used!! this is the way this search has been going. everyone says "just because". i cannot accept that as an answer.
360 degrees in a circle. The Earth takes 24 hours to rotate in a day (=360 degrees). 60 minutes in an hour. Hmm, 60 seconds in a minute... 60 times 60 equals 3,600! Coincedence? [EDIT] Actually, my reply was hasty. It seems you are wondering more why they chose a 360 degree circle, and specifically, why they divided it the way they did. Easy answer? Not sure there is one, historically. I've never heard of it. Speculative answer? All of the related numbers are divisible by 6. 360 days, 12 months, 30 days per month, 60 minutes, etc. Maybe 6 was a super-cool number to the ancients.
but you have to remember what makes an hour... 60 minutes, 60 seconds in a minute... so then why 60? and if there are 360 degrees in a circle, 60 min per degree, then you have 60 x 360 = 21600 minutes in a circle. now, what if we divided 21600 minutes into 24 hours-- each hour would have 900 minutes, so that's not right.. so my questions are: 1. why confuse things by calling a 60th of a degree a "minute" and then saying there are only 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes in a day? 2. why use 60 instead of 10? with #1, i also think why 24 hours and not 360? so then i think it's because of how long a minute actually is. but a minute is 60 seconds. so then how long is a second and why is it that long? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! :m:
Notice that you can divide 60 by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Since at the ancient era, geometers were busy all the time dividing segmentsand all kind of things, you see that 60 was a good number for them. In the same way, a circle is divided into 360 degrees, and notice that 360 can be divided into 2, 3, 4, 5,6,8,9,10,12,15,18.
To be honest I've never read anything that explains why base 60 was used. This may be like the problem of English Imperial units. Why have 16 ounces in a pound and 14 pounds in a stone or 12 pence in a shilling and 16 shillings in a pound sterling and 20 shilings in a guinea. Why these values where chosen is lost in the depths of time.
Babylonians did use a "base 60" number system (not a "place value" system but they tended to write number in terms of groups of 60. Perhaps because there are approximately 30 days from full moon to full moon and very close to 360 days in a year.
