Time Wiki
Register
Advertisement

Metric time is the practice of applying metric prefixes to time measurements. It uses the second as its base unit of time, rather than the more conventional measurements which are based on the day.

Problems[]

Problems arise when when using metric time. Values below 10-3 and above 103 quickly become impractical for measuring human activities.

Multiple Name of Unit Seconds Minutes Hours Days Years Human
10-3 millisecond 0.001 0.0000167       1 ms
10-2 centisecond 0.01 0.000167       10 ms
10-1 decisecond 0.1 0.00167       100 ms
100 second 1         1 s
101 decasecond 10 0.167       10 s
102 hectosecond 100 1.667 0.028     1 m 40 s
103 kilosecond 1,000 16.667 0.278     16 m 40 s
104 myriasecond 10,000 166.667 2.778 0.116   2 h 46 m 40 s
105 metric day 100,000 1,666.667 27.778 1.158 0.003 1 d 3 h 46 m 40 s
10^-12 picosecond 0.000000000001 1.666667*10^-14 2.7778*10^-16 1.16*10^-17 axprox3*10^-20 1
107 and 108 are currently not defined
* The "myria" prefix was abrogated (officially retired) in 1960.
** "Metric day" is an unofficial/ad hoc definition.

Likewise, adding metric prefixes to units of time such as the week also results in values that are difficult to use. Example

In the last example, the name alone is more cumbersome than simply saying "forty-nine weeks".

While the metric system provides a uniform way of counting time, implementing it requires a significant number of decimal places used for the values and becomes cumbersome, especially when compared with measurements based on the rotation of the Earth on its axis and around the sun, such as the day, year and longer measurements like the millennium.

For example, there are 295 days before October 23 in a year that is not a leap year, which equals 25,488,000 seconds. 2:57 p.m. and 47 seconds on October 23 adds 1,126,667 seconds, for a total of 26,614,667 seconds. Expressing this as gigaseconds equals 0.026614667 gigaseconds.

External links[]

Advertisement