Most of us have little trouble working out how many millilitres are in 2.4 litres of water (it’s 2,400). But the same can’t be said when we’re asked how many minutes are in 2.4 hours (it’s 144).
That’s because the Indo-Arabic numerals we often use to represent numbers are base-10, while the system we often use to measure time is base-60.
Expressing time in decimal notation leads to an interaction between these two bases, which can have implications at both the cognitive and cultural level.
