Martian Semi-Metric (24*10*1000) Clock

In this clock proposal, there are still 24 hours in the day, so that a day may still be divided conveniently into shifts. But the hours are divided into 10 parts, probably not called "minutes", which is further divided into 1000 parts, probably not called "seconds"*.

(Note: the Martian Date is according to the Darian Calendar, in numerical format, as I am not fond of Tom Gangale's sense of naming. His otherwise excellent calendar can be found here.)

Advantages:

• Convenient units:
  • If you watch the applet, you notice that the metric "seconds" field clips along at a comfortable pace, maybe a little fast, at about 0.37 earth seconds each. It's about as fast as you can count, if you talk fast. (No "Mississippi" on Mars.) It's fast, and yet not fast enough for blur, as with tenths-of-a-second on Earth. I find this very appealing.
  • The metric "minutes" are about 6:10 earth-minutes long. The 5-minute interval has proven to be such a comfortable length of time, that we rarely tell time in smaller intervals here on Earth, and we usually even take the extra effort to round to the nearest 5.
• Efficiency: It saves a little bit of writing-space and speaking-time: "12:30" becomes "12:5" ("twelve-five").
• Less confusion:
  • "12:5" is clearly distinguishable from an Earth time (such as "12:30"), which is basically the same argument usually given for not naming Martian months January, February, March...
  • One is also not quite as tempted to call the smallest units "seconds", which would cause confusion with the SI unit that would naturally still be used among scientists on Mars.
  • On Earth, 4:10 could mean either 4 hours 10 minutes, or 4 minutes 10 seconds. But with this Metric clock, you can clearly distinguish them by number of digits, since each field has a different number of digits.
  • It's easier to add and subtract time intervals in base 10 than in base 60.

• With 24*60*60, you basically knew that 10 minutes on Mars was just 2.7% longer than 10 minutes on Earth. Time on the scale of minutes might reasonably be discussed between Martians and Earthlings. With Metric time, it's hard to be constantly multiplying and dividing by 6 for minutes, and 0.37 for seconds. The only halfway-redeeming quality is that if you are forced to use a calculator, you will usually get a more accurate number.
• It lacks familiarity, besides the 24 hours.

* Even with a 24*60*60 system, there is a need to avoid calling the units by their Earth equivalents. Witness the failure of Mars Observer due to a confusion of English and Metric units ... units that aren't as easy to confuse.

Here are some naming suggestions:

tal, the smallest unit of time in Edgar Rice Burroughs' classic Martian sci-fi tales.
millitik, where the "minute" unit is a "tik" and the "Martian hour" is a "dekatik".
sixth, because the unit is about 1/3 of a second... :-)

Addendum

It has been brought to my attention that there is a slight modification of this scheme that has an interesting advantage: fitting with the earth second.

The 'tik' unit is 369.897 seconds long. If we standardize it to exactly 370 standard seconds, there will be 24 hours, 40 minutes in a day, overshooting the actual Martian mean solar day by just 24.8 seconds. This could be corrected by two (sometimes one) 'skip tiks' (spring forward) per month (assuming 24 months in a Martian year). That would be a loss of 12 minutes, 20 seconds at the end of every 4 weeks.

It sounds like a worthwhile compromise.