<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by $1500forGLD:
That is 200,000 seconds in a day (100 sec/min* 100 min/hr * 20hr). In normal time, there are 86,400 seconds in a day (60*60*24). How do you have a day that is 2.3 times as long? Is your second the same as our second? I'm totally lost.
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As you travel south and cross the equator, gravity is stronger (to stop us Australians from falling off the bottom of the world), coupled with the lower population density and seasonal reversal, the natural oscillation frequency of quartz is lower, resulting in the basic measure of metic time (how long it takes 1 litre of water to boil on a standard day at sea level) is also lower.
Then, when you consider we only have 10 months (Australians vacation through December and January anyway
), and removal of leap years, it all comes out in the wash. It is also why we can have a legal drinking age of 18 years
Editted to add some links that might help explain (let me add that I have no relationship with any of these links and until 2 mins ago had never looked at them):
http://www.acay.com.au/~price/
http://zapatopi.net/metrictime.html
http://www.universal-time.org/
http://www.indwes.edu/Faculty/bcupp/things/metrictm.htm
http://www.hearod.com/MetricTime.shtml
[This message has been edited by NM (edited 10-13-2002).]