In reply to:
what i always wondered was, why 60 with time. why 60 seconds and 60 minutes? is it a natural division or did someone decide on that number?
The answer seems to be the Babylonians were the first to divide the day into hours and minutes and they happened to count in base 60 instead of base 10 as we do. People recognised a nifty idea (so much easier than saying when the sun just touches that hill over there when seen from my front door) and took over the same way of doing it, just as the Greeks kept the Semitic arbitrary alphabetical order (which was discussed in another thread recently).
As for why the Bablyonians counted in base 60 (no, they were not aliens with 15 digits on their hands and feet), this is discussed at: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Babylonian_numerals.html
Bingley
