2006-11-03 07:45:28 · 6 answers · asked by Looneygirl 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Earth Sciences & Geology
It's partly because of school children, when clocks go back like last week, it is lighter in the mornings making it safer for them to walk to school. When the children go home in the afternoon, it is still light enough despite it getting darker an hour earlier.
Why not leave the clocks there? It is because farmers in the summer like to have an extra hour of light in the evenings so they can get more work done. In general people like to have light longer in the evenings, especially when sitting out in the sunshine.
It does seem odd to keep messing with the clocks - some people go into work an hour early or late because they forget to change them. My son has a Sunday job and he was up an hour earlier than he needed to be last weekend. I just had an extra hour in bed - it does have some uses!
Personally I don't really mind the changes - in autumn it makes it feel like Christmas is nearly here, and in spring it cheers me up because summer and long evenings are on their way.
2006-11-03 08:53:54 · answer #1 · answered by Billy 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
These days, the real reason that we have Daylight Saving Time in the summer is very simple. As the name suggests, it is to save daylight.
Most people get up between 06:00 and 08:00 and go to bed at between 22:00 and 00:00. If in the summer, it gets light at 04:00 and gets dark at say 20:00 and very few people are up at 04:00 to enjoy the daylight but most are up at 20:00 where they could use it, wouldn't it make sense to move an hour of light from the morning to the evening?
So that's why they put the clocks forward, so that 05:00 becomes 06:00 and 20:00 becomes 21:00 - so it's light an hour longer in the evening.
In the winter, it's dark both when we get up and when we go to bed, so there's not much point in doing it, but because most people prefer to wake up in daylight, we put the hour of light back in the winter so that it's lighter in the morning.
Makes sense to me.
2006-11-04 12:11:19 · answer #2 · answered by amancalledchuda 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I heard it was started in WWII to save fuel that was used both for lighting and tanks. See, without DST, in the summer it would get light REALLY early--like starting to lighten around 3:00 am and fully light by around 5:30--and then it would get dark around 8:00 while people were still working. Since hardly anybody needed it to be light at three or four in the morning, but lots of people needed it to be light at eight or nine at night, it was decided to move the clock forward an hour during the summer and take advantage of all that natural light.
2006-11-03 17:21:36 · answer #3 · answered by Amy F 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think one of the reasons for this was because when school children were coming out of school, it was dark, and they were getting hit by cars when crossing the road so they changed the clocks so that it was still light when they came out.
2006-11-03 16:11:15 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think was because ww1. It was due to farmers having enough day light I presume it 2 hours, back + forth.
2006-11-04 09:58:52 · answer #5 · answered by CLIVE C 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It was originally to get more light mornings for farmers.
2006-11-03 16:49:08 · answer #6 · answered by ribble_girl 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋