What is Base-60?

Base-60 is a way to count using groups of 60 instead of groups of 10 like we usually do.

Imagine you have a big bag of marbles. Instead of counting them one by one, you group them into bags of 60. Each bag represents a number in base-60, just like how we use bags of 10 marbles when we count in base-10.

Well, 60 is a very friendly number because it can be divided evenly by many other numbers: 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. That makes it super useful for counting time or angles, like how we have 60 seconds in a minute, or 60 minutes in an hour.

Let’s say you had 125 marbles. In base-10, that's 1 group of 100, 2 groups of 10, and 5 single marbles. But in base-60, it would be 2 groups of 60 (which is 120) and 5 extra marbles, so you'd write it as 2:5, kind of like telling time on a clock!

Base-60 is a cool way to count that helps make some big numbers easier to work with.