But I'm sharing it with you all anyways :)
Today I was scheduling a mass email at work, which I do fairly often, and whenever I pick the time, I have to set it in Pacific time....it's just how the system is set up. So today I wanted to schedule for 2:00CST, which is 12:00PST...12:00PM, that is.
And I wondered, why would 12:00AM signify the start of the day, rather than the end? Why does the time counting start with 12:00, only to go back to 1:00 an hour later?
Well, after a little research (meaning I googled "12:00PM"), Wikipedia gave this explanation. My favorite part, which was difficult considering I actually found the article somewhat confusing, is this:
"In the United States, noon is often called "12:00 p.m." and midnight "12:00 a.m." With this convention, thinking of "12" as "0" makes the system logical."
I'm not sure what is logical about giving a different number value to a number that already has a value of it's own (i.e. 12 = 12), but at least it confirmed that I was sending my email at the correct time!
2 comments:
Growing up we were on a 24 hour clock (military time) so midnight was actually 00:00 - the start of the day, and the day ended at 23:59, which made sense to me. So noon was "twelve hundred hours" and 1pm was "thirteen hundred hours" etc. I tried to read that article, too but I also got a bit confused :)
this reminds me of a debate dave and i had last week... which was whether this year was the start of a new decade... ah we are all such dorks :) (oh, and yes, 2011 starts the new decade, not 2010. 1 point to david!)
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