Why Are There 60 Minutes In An Hour Instead Of 100?

There are 60 minutes in an hour because people long ago used a different way to count than we do today.

A long time ago, people counted using their fingers, really clever finger counting! One hand has 5 fingers, so they used that as a base for counting. If you use both hands, it's 10 fingers total. That’s why we count in groups of 10 today.

But some ancient people, like the Babylonians, thought 60 was a super special number, it can be divided by many numbers: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, and more. That made math easier for them when they measured time or counted things.

So they split an hour into 60 minutes, just like you might split a pizza into 60 slices, even though it’s not the easiest number to count with!

Imagine your favorite cartoon only lasted 100 minutes instead of 60. That would mean each minute is shorter, and the show could have more episodes! But that might be too hard for people back then who were used to counting in groups of 5 or 10.

So we stuck with 60 minutes, even though it’s not as easy to count with as 100.