Base 60

  My main theory on why Babylonians used base 60 is because of the shape of the circle. We have learned circles have an angle of 360 degrees which is conveniently divisible by 60. I would imagine during that time frame, concepts of different shapes like circles, triangles, etc were being discovered and a possible hypothesis I have is that everything revolves around a circle. To elaborate, I mean going from a starting point and going to the end point (back to the starting point). Another reason why I think base 60 is used is because 60 can be divided into different interevals and can be used to represent repeating decimals. (i.e 20/60, 34/60, etc)  Maybe they did not have a concept on how to represent decimals so I think base 60 helped solved that problem. 


Today, we see base 60 used in mostly in the telling of time. (seconds, minutes, hours)
I imagine that our calendar system is also based on this system.

After some research, I found that base 60 was used by the Babylonians because number 60 is divisible by many numbers: 1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,60. In this way, many numbers can be represented through fractions and calculations were much easier. Although the one flaw is that zero cannot be represented. 
Base 60 also tied with the angles of the circle and by dividing each section by 360 would give one degree representing one day. Also, base 60 had an advantage for transactional usages as well.

Comments

  1. Amanda FritzlanOctober 2, 2022 at 1:40 PM

    I agree with you about the significance of a circle for base 60. This makes me think that it is important to learn/teach about time with a circular clock, not just a digital one.

    ReplyDelete

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