Sept 10 - Why base 60?

 This is in response to the in class activity on Babylonian math done on Monday, September 8. My classmates brought up some really interesting reasons as to why the Babylonians chose the sexagesimal system to count. One of my reasons that I can think of related to what was already brought up in class is that they counted on one hand - a fist representing "zero" and the five fingers representing the numbers 1-5. Another reason I can think of is that it has something to do with the position of the sun throughout the day. I'm not sure exactly what - but I suppose I will find out after researching. Today, we see 60 being used in a lot of concepts - an hour has 60 minutes, a minute has 60 seconds, 60, 120, 180 and 360 degrees are some of the special angles in trigonometry. 

Upon researching why Babylonians used base 60, I realize that I had been overthinking about an obvious thing. 60 is a composite numbers that has factors that are themselves composite. It is divisible by 2, 3 and 5, thus making it easy to work with fractions. This is such a sophisticated way to do math!