Reflection - Why base 60?

 

Speculative:

60 is a useful number and used a lot in our daily lives. It is used in times (seconds, minutes, hours) and it is also used in degrees. Degree of the circle is 360 and degree of a triangle is 180 which is 60 times 3. I think 60 is significant as it can be easily divided with the numbers, and it has more divisors than any smaller positive integer.

Research:

After I do research about 60, I could check that numbers of seconds in minute, minutes in hour come from the base 60 numeral system. I could also know few more significances which are that Babylonians knew the formula that is today known as Pythagorean Theorem, and they thought there are 360 days in a year. They divided the circumference into 360 and believed one of 360 equals a day. However, one main fault of 60 in Babylonian numeration system was absence of zero

Reference

Lamb, Evelyn. “Ancient Babylonian Number System Had No Zero.” Scientific American Blog Network, Scientific American, 31 Aug. 2014, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/ancient-babylonian-number-system-had-no-zero/. 

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanOctober 2, 2022 at 1:27 PM

    Studying ancient Babylonian mathematics can definitely give us an appreciation for our base 60 time system!

    ReplyDelete

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