Then night was split the same way and we arrived at 24 hours! They split the day up into 10 hours and then added one hour at each end. The whole 24-hour day thing was started by the ancient Egyptians. In fact, it’s got the most divisors of any small number- maybe that s why there ended up being 24 hours in a day. It’s one of those numbers with lots of divisors- so you have 1,2,3,4,6 and 12 plus 24 of course. Those who are superstitious among you might here alarm bells on that on as the number 4 is often thought of as an unlucky number, especially in China.
This number is the factorial of 4, written as 4! By that we mean 4x3x2x1=24. This is a number that is burned on most people’s minds. The number 24- what’s so special about it? It’s a black even number on the roulette wheel that sites almost opposite the zero on a European roulette wheel and fairly near the 00 on an American.Ģ4 is one of those familiar numbers (like 12) that we see around a lot- and that’s almost entirely down to the fact that there are 24 hours in a day.
