Consider the following proposal for a decimal calendar. The fundamental unit is the decimal year (Yr), equal to the number of conventional (SI) seconds required for the earth to complete a circuit of the sun. Other units are defined in the following table. Develop, where possible, factors for converting decimal calendar units to conventional calendar units. Discuss pros and cons of the proposal.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

There is a little ambiguity in the number of seconds per year, because of leap year, occasional addition of “leap- seconds”, etc.
A reasonable number is 365.25 days*24 hours/day*60 min/hour*60 s/min = 31557600 s. Using this value, the above
decimal calendar units are
1 Sc = 31.6 s = 0.53 minutes
1 Mn = 316 s = 5.26 minutes
1 Hr = 3156 s = 52.6 minutes = 0.877 hour
1 Dy = 526 minutes = 8.77 hour = 0.365 days
1 Wk = 87.7 hour = 3.65 days
1 Mo = 36.5 days
An inherent problem with this, or any other, decimal calendar is that a calendar needs to accommodate multiple “natural” time scales – at least the period of rotation of the earth, so that day/night cycles are reflected in the time units and the period of the earth’s orbit around the sun, so that seasonal changes are reflected in the time units. Such “natural” scales that govern our everyday experience are less prevalent for other dimensions, such as mass, length, etc.