I read in the paper that today, where I live in northern California, there will be 13 hours and 20 minutes of daylight. (And 10 hours and 40 minutes of darkness.)
Intriguing numbers I thought. It turns out that 13:20:00 is exactly five-ninths of a 24 hour day. That means that 5/9 of today will be light, and 4/9 be dark. That's a nice comfortable balance especially in April.
I'll get to experience 5/9 daylight again in late August, but it will feel a lot hotter then.
The only use I know of for 5/9 is to convert degrees fahrenheit to degrees celsius. It is interesting that dividing 2 odd numbers gives the same repeating odd number, which is the numerator of the fraction! (Same for 1 but not 3 or 7)
Posted by: Curtis Dumonceaux | 20 April 2008 at 08:40 PM
Well, Curtis, I can see you've got your numerical thinking cap on today.
Posted by: Roger von Oech | 20 April 2008 at 08:48 PM
I can't wait for those five-ninths to get down here to Mexico!
Hope you guys up there can make it to the 4/7 of daylight or why not to a beautiful 3/5 soon!
Posted by: Luis | 21 April 2008 at 08:16 AM