LDS Freedom Forum

clarkkent14 wrote:That's funny.... Fool's day is the day the King swaps with a peasant or prisoner to be King for a day (Prince and the Pauper) and then they kill the fool, so they can re-crown the old king the next day... the new years day. Just popped in my head.

Although a tenth of a day is a convenient unit for scheduling purposes, it is a rather arbitrary one as the base unit for naming purposes. The most natural base unit is a day. Therefore I propose that the base Metric Time unit be called a day in English and that it be equal to one mean solar day. This should, however, be considered a temporary name for the present purpose of explaining decimilized time in English. Users of other languages should replace it with their word for day, such as Tag, día, jour, יוֹם, or 日.

Using metric prefixes on day we get:

Metricized Day
deciday (dd) = 1/10 day (Metric hour)
centiday (cd) = 1/100 day
milliday (md) = 1/1000 day (Metric minute)
microday (µd) = 1/1000000 day (Metric decisecond)
The "day"s may be omitted for brevity in situations where it is understood that you are referring to time. This gives us the following informal or slang names:

Informal Names
deciday = deci or dez
centiday = centi or cent
milliday = milli or mil
microday = micro or mic (pronounced "mike")
or moo (the symbol for micro is µ)
The MT Second And SI Second

We now come to some problems. You may have noticed that there was no equivalent to a MT second listed above. Since there is no current metric prefix for 10-5 we can't state a MT second using the unit day (except as 10 µd). Also there is the existence of the SI second, which is the official unit of time of the International System of Units (aka the Metric System or SI). Here are some options:

Create a 10-5 prefix.
May I float the idea of a quinto (q) for 10-5 and a matching Quotta (Q) for 105? With this we get the following:

quintoday (qd) = 1/100000 day (MT second)
informal = "quint

Redefine the SI second to be equal to 10-5 day.
The SI second is defined as the period of time that it takes a specific number of cesium isotope radiation emissions to occur such that it is as close to a mean ABT second (1/86400 day) as feasible given the variance of the earth's rotation. To redefine the SI second to be equal to a MT second would mean redefining it to be equal to whatever number of cesium-133 emissions are close to 10-5 mean day given variation.

There are two problems with this option. First is that there could be confusion over having the same name for two different time periods as was mentioned above for hours and minutes. Second is that the rules of the SI are that there is one base unit for each base quantity. By introducing the day as a base unit and keeping the second, we will have two base units of the quantity time. How much of a problem this is depends on how strictly you wish to adhere to the SI rules.

Create a new name for 10-5 day.
Perhaps named for a researcher? This would solve the first of the previous problems but not the second.

Keep the SI second.
Since the SI second isn't really defined as 1/86400 of a day but instead an arbitrary number of cesium isotope decays, we can't really fault it for being Babylonian. The SI second is already used as a decimalized unit in science and engineering, so why not use the SI second as the time unit for technical purposes and the SI day as the unit for clock keeping and day-to-day use (timing boiled eggs and such). This also introduces a dual unit system though, and one where conversion is harder.

Adopt the day as the official SI time unit
Let seconds go the way of scruples and stones. Expect to hear scientists and engineers use femtodays a lot. A day will need to be more precisely defined as mentioned above.