Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 18 June 2021, 22:10
The committee couldn’t agree how to described it. One camp favoured expressions such as “A period of 24 hours” or “86400 seconds of elapsed time”. Others argued for an astronomical definition: for example, “The time taken for the earth to rotate once about its axis” or “Approximately 1 over 365.24217 of the earth’s orbital period”.
The meeting dragged on and on. Eventually we had to call it a day.
A timely debate
The committee couldn’t agree how to described it. One camp favoured expressions such as “A period of 24 hours” or “86400 seconds of elapsed time”. Others argued for an astronomical definition: for example, “The time taken for the earth to rotate once about its axis” or “Approximately 1 over 365.24217 of the earth’s orbital period”.
The meeting dragged on and on. Eventually we had to call it a day.