How am I supposed to know certain tasks for math?

So I have 24 hours game time, which equals 6 min real life time. So 24x6=144. 144÷60. Wait, how do I know to do that? Like what tells me to divide 144 by 60?

Like I want to know the explanation of why 144 gets divided by 60, and what defines that? Did ancient Greeks figure that out? How was it invented? There's all this math and equations and algebra, and calculus, where'd it all come from and why is it so necessary??

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NerdyPotato · M

I have no idea why you'd multiply 24 by 6 or divide that by 60. What were you trying to calculate?

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NerdyPotato · M

@twiigss to go from minutes to hours, you divide it by the number of minutes per hour. That's a common concept, and the same to go from feet to yards or milliliters to liters. But why are there 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day? No clue... Those seem like strange choices for sure.

tenente · 100+, M

@twiigss @NerdyPotato engineer here. sumerians developed base 60 (and base 12) used for timekeeping and geometry. it's better than alternatives and ingrained in our daily lives so we just keep using it

tenente · 100+, M

@NerdyPotato

But why are there 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day?

not to bore you: base 60 has many divisors even using prime factors making it easy to divide hours into quarters, halves, etc without resorting to decimals.

above there's conflict with base 10 and that's expected (what's .4 of an hour?) base 10 has far less divisors and only 2 prime factors, very theoretical, and not adaptable for our real world needs

HootyTheNightOwl

This looks too much like maths to me... 😱😱😱

**Clutches their pearls**

debit · 16-17, M

youre dividing by 60 because youre seeing how many sets of 60s (one full hour) is in 144 minutes

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