• ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    We could change the definition of a second, but we’d be changing the si unit of time to mesh up with things that don’t currently have si equivalents. We’d have to redo a significant number of units.
    The meter is defined in terms of the second, which is then used to define the kilogram.
    It’s a base unit that all the others are built on. This wouldn’t be a tweak, it would be rebuilding the metric system. So that there would be ten hours in a day, which we would keep having to tweak because the earths rotation isn’t constant, which is why “day” isn’t an si unit in the first place.

    Yeah, the civilization that decided they like base 60 is long gone, but the reason they liked it is still relevant, which is why we keep using it. Highly composite numbers are really convenient, and ten is a pretty shitty number beyond being the base we often count in.