24 hours in a day???

[berty2001]

Why is there 24 hours in day. why is the day not broken up into ten segments or twnety, and why have two halfs???

[Quizmonster]

The Egyptians were first to have a 24-hour day, measured from dawn to dawn. Before that, days had been divided into twelve segments, regardless of the season and actual length of the period of daylight. In the second century BC, the astronomer Hipparchus found such an arrangement was useless for his purposes. He, therefore, created a 24-hour system, based on the duration of hours at an equinox - that is, when day and night are the same length. (Non-astronomers continued to use the 12-hour system for over 1000 years, however.) Later, in the second century AD, Ptolemy - another Egyptian scientist - divided these 24 equinoctial hours into 60 minutes, based on a system originally devised by the Babylonians.

[TommyC]

Give that man a banana...!!

[Mattk]

24 hours in a day simply because it take approx 24 hours for the earth to do 1 full rotation on its axis whilst orbitting the sun

[Brugel]

After the French Revolution there was an attempt to have either a 10 hour day or hours which lasted for 100 minutes (I can't remember which). For some reason,this didn't catch on.

[Quizmonster]

Yes, Matt, but it takes the earth 24 hours to complete a rotation only because that's the figure Hipparchus and Ptolemy decided it took! If - for whatever reason - they'd opted for 7 or 13 or 29, that's how many hours a rotation would last instead.

[stop staring]

look1 u r all rong.

the answer is that there is 24 hours in adfay becuase that is theway god made it!!!!!!!!!

simple and true!