Moving the clocks forward ...?

Question

There is a lot of talk on the bbc's 'have your say' messageboard about the pros and cons of changing our clocks in autumn and spring. What i'd like to know is how can time be 'changed' - surely 12 noon is when the sun is at it's highest in the sky, how does it all work - put SIMPLY please.

i still don't understand - we don't change time? we do, surely - tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock my mum will be saying 'course, it's only 9 o'clock really', and what about the sun at noon, how can it be at it's highest 12 o'clock today and then 12 o'clock tomorrow when 12 o'clock tomorrow will be 11..!! it's gonna be staring me in the face isn't it ....

So Mr Sceptic, we move our clocks making them not entirely accurate if one is going by the sun?

Answer 1

Time is defined by humans, not by nature. It used to be that 12 noon was defined as when the Sun is highest in the sky. But this resulted in everyone's watches being off - high noon happens at different times depending on your longitude. So they implemented time zones - if you live in the middle of the time zone then high noon will happen at 12:00, but it won't be exactly at 12:00 for most people. They did this so people could synchronize their watches - it was actually very important for train schedules back then.

Daylight savings time was instituted so that we wouldn't "waste" our daylight hours in the summer by sleeping through some of them. Why don't people just wake up earlier? Good question! Turns out it's easier to get an entire nation to change their clocks than it is to get an entire nation to change their sleep schedule.

There's some interesting info about daylight savings time at this website: http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/

Here's more info on time keeping through history: http://time.gov/exhibits.html

To counter what someone else said - daylight savings time does not add another hour of daylight to the day, that is impossible to do! Farmers couldn't care less about how we set the clocks, as they wake up at sunrise (or earlier) regardless. It would be lovely if congress could legislate more daylight hours to every day, but no one can change the laws of nature!

We don't measure time by the Sun anymore. For example, for me here in Boston, the Sun will transit (be as high as it gets in the sky) at 12:28 Eastern Daylight Time. Tomorrow, the Sun will transit at 11:28 Eastern Standard Time. Find out the times for where you live from this site: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html

Answer 2

All we do is move the times of day in the summer so that the Sun is at its highest at 1300. This is achieved by moving the clocks forward and moves sunrise and sunset one hour later.

This, in effect, shifts an hour of sunlight from early in the morning when we're all asleep, to the evening when we're all awake enjoying ourselves. It's almost as if the government were telling us that during the summer months we have to get up and go to bed (and do everything else) an hour earlier.

There is a side effect of saving electricity on lighting etc.

Time (as in hours and minutes) is a man-made construct and we can do what we want with it.

Answer 3

Time doesn't really change, the clock changes to accommodate the change of hours of daylight and night. During winter, the sun sets earlier and during summer the suns sets later so we change the time to accommodate that change in hours of day and night.

Answer 4

Lets go back to following nature, it affects me, my inner body clock, it takes weeks for me to adjust to the loss of an hour or the gaining of an hour. Children follow an inner clock, it does not matter what the clock says so by changing a human clock just affects their natural patterns of sleep, thus affecting behaviour & concentration as they do not go to sleep until their body clock was telling them it was time to sleep (their natural pattern). I was told this was done for farming in time gone by - I now see the farmer in the field at 5 am with lights on his tractor, antoher reason was for children to go to school in day light? but that does not happen with after school clubs, going to friends homes - time to stay at british summer time and allow our body clocks to stay in line with nature.

Answer 5

Simply saying this, it is because of longitude and latitude.
Different time zone existed for people living at different longitudes.
Longer daylight or night times for people living at higher latitudes.
This inspired people to think about daylight saving time.

Answer 6

The time isnt changed we simply move from british summertime to greenwich meantime. It goes back centuries and was originally done to give the farming communities more daylight hours to work during the winter months.

Answer 7

Time is moving forward

Answer 8

1 hour.
4am become 3 am , in my country

Answer 9

time isn't really changed,just your clock.

Answer 10

time is not actualy changed just the way we measure it