12 (number) explained

Number:12
Numeral:duodecimal
Divisor:1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12
Greek Prefix:dodeca-
Latin Prefix:duodeca-
Lang1:Malayalam
Lang1 Symbol:൰൨
Lang2:Bengali
Lang2 Symbol:১২
Lang3:Hebrew numeral
Lang3 Symbol:י"ב
Lang4:Babylonian numeral

12 (twelve) is the natural number following 11 and preceding 13.

Twelve is the 3rd superior highly composite number,[1] the 3rd colossally abundant number,[2] the 5th highly composite number, and is divisible by the numbers from 1 to 4, and 6, a large number of divisors comparatively.

It is central to many systems of timekeeping, including the Western calendar and units of time of day, and frequently appears in the world's major religions.

Name

Twelve is the largest number with a single-syllable name in English. Early Germanic numbers have been theorized to have been non-decimal: evidence includes the unusual phrasing of eleven and twelve, the former use of "hundred" to refer to groups of 120, and the presence of glosses such as "tentywise" or "ten-count" in medieval texts showing that writers could not presume their readers would normally understand them that way.[3] [4] [5] Such uses gradually disappeared with the introduction of Arabic numerals during the 12th-century Renaissance.

Derived from Old English, English, Old (ca.450-1100);: twelf and English, Old (ca.450-1100);: tuelf are first attested in the 10th-century Lindisfarne Gospels' Book of John. It has cognates in every Germanic language (e.g. German), whose Proto-Germanic ancestor has been reconstructed as Germanic languages: twaliƀi..., from Germanic languages: twa ("two") and suffix Germanic languages: -lif- or Germanic languages: -liƀ- of uncertain meaning. It is sometimes compared with the Lithuanian Lithuanian: dvýlika, although Lithuanian: -lika is used as the suffix for all numbers from 11 to 19 (analogous to "-teen"). Every other Indo-European language instead uses a form of "two"+"ten", such as the Latin Latin: duōdecim. The usual ordinal form is "twelfth" but "dozenth" or "duodecimal" (from the Latin word) is also used in some contexts, particularly base-12 numeration. Similarly, a group of twelve things is usually a "dozen" but may also be referred to as a "dodecad" or "duodecad". The adjective referring to a group of twelve is "duodecuple".

As with eleven,[6] the earliest forms of twelve are often considered to be connected with Proto-Germanic Germanic languages: liƀan or Germanic languages: liƀan ("to leave"), with the implicit meaning that "two is left" after having already counted to ten.[7] The Lithuanian suffix is also considered to share a similar development. The suffix Germanic languages: -lif- has also been connected with reconstructions of the Proto-Germanic for ten.[6] [8]

As mentioned above, 12 has its own name in Germanic languages such as English (dozen), Dutch, German, and Swedish, all derived from Old French . It is a compound number in many other languages, e.g. Italian (but in Spanish and Portuguese, 16, and in French, 17 is the first compound number), Japanese 十二 jūni.

Written representation

In prose writing, twelve, being the last single-syllable numeral, is sometimes taken as the last number to be written as a word, and 13 the first to be written using digits.This is not a binding rule, and in English language tradition, it is sometimes recommended to spell out numbers up to and including either nine, ten or twelve, or even ninety-nine or one hundred. Another system spells out all numbers written in one or two words (sixteen, twenty-seven, fifteen thousand, but 372 or 15,001).[9] In German orthography, there used to be the widely followed (but unofficial) rule of spelling out numbers up to twelve (zwölf). The Duden (the German standard dictionary) mentions this rule as outdated.

In mathematics

12 is a composite number, the smallest abundant number, a semiperfect number,[10] a highly composite number,[11] a refactorable number,[12] and a Pell number.[13] It is the smallest of two known sublime numbers, numbers that have a perfect number of divisors whose sum is also perfect.[14]

There are twelve Jacobian elliptic functions and twelve cubic distance-transitive graphs.

A twelve-sided polygon is a dodecagon. In its regular form, it is the largest polygon that can uniformly tile the plane alongside other regular polygons, as with the truncated hexagonal tiling or the truncated trihexagonal tiling.[15]

A regular dodecahedron has twelve pentagonal faces. Regular cubes and octahedrons both have 12 edges, while regular icosahedrons have 12 vertices.

The densest three-dimensional lattice sphere packing has each sphere touching twelve other spheres, and this is almost certainly true for any arrangement of spheres (the Kepler conjecture). Twelve is also the kissing number in three dimensions.

There are twelve complex apeirotopes in dimensions five and higher, which include van Oss polytopes in the form of complex

n

-orthoplexes.[16] There are also twelve paracompact hyperbolic Coxeter groups of uniform polytopes in five-dimensional space.

Bring's curve is a Riemann surface of genus four, with a domain that is a regular hyperbolic 20-sided icosagon.[17] By the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the area of this fundamental polygon is equal to

12\pi

.

Twelve is the smallest weight for which a cusp form exists. This cusp form is the discriminant

\Delta(q)

whose Fourier coefficients are given by the Ramanujan

\tau

-function and which is (up to a constant multiplier) the 24th power of the Dedekind eta function:

\Delta(\tau)=(2\pi)12η24(\tau)

This fact is related to a constellation of interesting appearances of the number twelve in mathematics ranging from the fact that the abelianization of special linear group

\operatorname{SL}(2,Z)

has twelve elements, to the value of the Riemann zeta function at

-1

being

-\tfrac{1}{12}

, which stems from the Ramanujan summation

1+2+3+4+ … =-

1
12

(ak{R})

Although the series is divergent, methods such as Ramanujan summation can assign finite values to divergent series.

List of basic calculations

Division12345678910111213141516
12 ÷ x126432.421.1.51.1.21.10.0.0.80.75
x ÷ 120.080.10.250.0.410.50.580.0.750.80.9111.081.11.251.
Exponentiation123456789101112
12121441728207362488322985984358318084299816965159780352619173642247430083706888916100448256
x1409653144116777216244140625217678233613841287201687194767362824295364811000000000000 31384283767218916100448256

In other bases

The duodecimal system (1210 [twelve] = 1012), which is the use of 12 as a division factor for many ancient and medieval weights and measures, including hours, probably originates from Mesopotamia.

In nature

Notably, twelve is the number of full lunations in a solar year, hence the number of months in a solar calendar, as well as the number of signs in the Western, Islamic and the Chinese zodiac. Twelve is also the number of years for an orbital period of Jupiter.

Religion

The number twelve carries religious, mythological and magical symbolism, generally representing perfection, entirety, or cosmic order in traditions since antiquity.

Ancient Greek religion

Judaism and Christianity

Ishmael – the first-born son of Abraham – has 12 sons/princes (Genesis 25:16), and Jacob also has 12 sons, who are the progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.[19] This is reflected in Christian tradition, notably in the twelve Apostles. When Judas Iscariot is disgraced, a meeting is held (Acts) to add Saint Matthias to complete the number twelve once more.The Book of Revelation contains much numerical symbolism, and many of the numbers mentioned have 12 as a divisor. 12:1 mentions a woman - interpreted as the people of Israel, the Church and the Virgin Mary - wearing a crown of twelve stars (representing each of the twelve tribes of Israel). Furthermore, there are 12,000 people sealed from each of the twelve tribes of Israel (the Tribe of Dan is omitted while Manasseh is mentioned), making a total of 144,000 (which is the square of 12 multiplied by a thousand).

12 was the only number considered to be religiously divine in the 1600s causing many Catholics to wear 12 buttons to church every Sunday. Some extremely devout Catholics would always wear this number of buttons to any occasion on any type of clothing.

Islam

Twelve is referred to in a few different verses of the Quran. Two are in reference to the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

The second reference is:

Note 1: Manna (heavenly bread) and quails (chicken-like birds) sustained the children of Israel in the wilderness after they left Egypt.

The third reference is to the number of months and the sacred ones amongst them:

Note 2: The four sacred months of the Islamic calendar are Dhu al-Qa'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, Muharram, and Rajab (months 11, 12, 1 and 7).

Hinduism

Others

Law

Timekeeping

In numeral systems

Arabic: ۱۲ArabicArabic: ១២KhmerArmenian: ԺԲArmenian
Arabic: ১২BanglaGreek, Modern (1453-);: ΔΙΙAttic GreekGreek, Modern (1453-);: Maya
Hebrew: יבHebrewV20-Z1-Z1Egyptian
Hindi: १२Indian and Nepali (Devanāgarī)Chinese: 十二Chinese and Japanese
Tamil: ௧௨TamilLatin: XIIRoman and Etruscan
Thai: ๑๒ThaiChuvash: IIXChuvash
Telugu: ౧౨Telugu and KannadaUrdu: ١٢Urdu
Greek, Modern (1453-);: ιβʹIonian GreekMalayalam: ൧൨Malayalam

In science

In sports

In technology

In the arts

Film

Films with the number twelve or its variations in their titles include:

Television

Theatre

Literature

Comics

Music

Music theory

Pop music

Art theory

Games

In other fields

See also

Sources

Further reading

Books

Journal articles

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: A002201 - OEIS . 2024-11-28 . oeis.org.
  2. Web site: A004490 - OEIS . 2024-11-28 . oeis.org.
  3. Book: Gordon, E. V. . Introduction to Old Norse . 1957 . Clarendon Press . Oxford, England . 292–293 . 2017-09-08 . 2016-04-15 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160415205641/https://www.scribd.com/doc/49127454/Introduction-to-Old-Norse-by-E-V-Gordon . dead .
  4. Stevenson . W. H. . The Long Hundred and its Use in England. Archaeological Review. December 1899 . 4 . 5 . 313–317 .
  5. Goodare. Julian . 1994 . The long hundred in medieval and early modern Scotland . Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. 123 . 395–418 . 10.9750/PSAS.123.395.418 . 162146336 .
  6. Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "eleven, adj. and n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1891.
  7. Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "twelve, adj. and n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1916.
  8. .
  9. Web site: Numbers: Writing Numbers // Purdue Writing Lab. Purdue Writing Lab. 25 February 2020.
  10. 2016-06-01 .
  11. 2023-06-19 .
  12. 2023-06-15 .
  13. 2023-01-10.
  14. Web site: Sloane's A081357 : Sublime numbers . The On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences . OEIS Foundation . 2016-06-01.
  15. Book: Grünbaum, Branko . Branko Grünbaum . Shephard, G. C. . G.C. Shephard . registration . Tilings and Patterns . Section 2.1: Regular and uniform tilings . W. H. Freeman and Company . New York . 1987 . 59 . 10.2307/2323457 . 2323457 . 0-7167-1193-1 . 13092426 . 119730123 .
  16. Book: H. S. M. Coxeter . H. S. M. Coxeter . Regular Complex Polytopes . Cambridge University Press . 2 . 1991 . 144–146 . 10.2307/3617711 . 3617711 . 978-0-521-39490-1 . 116900933 . 0732.51002 .
  17. Weber . Matthias . Kepler's small stellated dodecahedron as a Riemann surface . . 220 . 1 . 2005 . 172 . 10.2140/pjm.2005.220.167 . free . 2195068 . 54518859 . 1100.30036 .
  18. .
  19. "And it is thought that there is a special significance in the number twelve. It was typified, we know, by many things in the Old Testament; by the twelve sons of Jacob, by the twelve princes of the children of Israel, by the twelve fountains in Elim, by the twelve stones in Aaron's breast-plate, by the twelve loaves of the shew-bread, by the twelve spies sent by Moses, by the twelve stones of which the altar was made, by the twelve stones taken out of Jordan, by the twelve oxen which bare"P. Young, Daily readings for a year (1863), p. 150.
  20. Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, 3d ed.
  21. Web site: Lunar versus solar calendar.
  22. Web site: Attia. Peter. 2018-09-05. The Full History of Board Games. 2020-10-22. Medium. en.
  23. Web site: Shilling currency . Encyclopedia Britannica . 20 May 2021 . en.