How time works?

Question

Why it is considered 24 hours when the time shows at 12am? But the sun starts rising when the time is 7am and dawn at 7pm? We can see the skies changing in these time...but..

Why not 7 to 7 considered 24 hours instead of 12 to12?

Do you guys understand me?

If not sorry, I don't know how to explain. Sorry ok.

I just wanna know..

Answer 1

Maybe I can clear it up...

Time is a human created 'thing'. It provides a reference, it is NOT a law. Years ago, (I mean like 2000 years ago) time was measured from the beginning of daylight (so, when you read in the bible of the 6th hour, it means the 6th hour AFTER the sun came up)

Time has evolved over the ages. The only natural time is that of the seasons and the precession of the constelations around the sky. The separation of morning time (midnight to noon) and evening time (noon to midnight) is purely convenience. I don't where it began.

Answer 2

Part of how clocks are designed go back literally thousands of years. Our 24 clock, with 60 minute hours and 60 second minutes is largely a result of ancient Babylonian mathematics.

The earliest clocks were 24 hour clocks, with 12 hour clocks appearing about 500 years ago. Noon was established as the time the sun was directly ovehead. Originally, midnight was 0 and ran a full 24 hours, with 12 being the midday.

The 12 hour clocks have a cleaner interface, especially when it comes to displaying minutes. 12 is still used for midday, so midnight became 12 by default.

In places other than the US (including the US military) they still use 24 hours, rather than 12.

Answer 3

There are 24 hours in a day because that's the amount of time it takes the earth to rotate once. This is important because, for the sake of consistency, humans need to know when a certain time will be every time so we may plan accordingly. For example, let's say I wanted to take you to dinner (after the sun has gone down.) and then watch a movie together afterwards. How would we know when to meet at the restaurant? How would we know which tickets to buy if time only went from 7am to 7pm. The other 12 hours of night time would be completely useless to us because we wouldn't be able to use time. We need 24 hours because humans do things at night too.

Answer 4

Our concept of keeping time has evolved with out understanding of Earth's revolution and orbit.

Regardless of where we choose to say a day starts, it takes the Earth about 24 hours to complete one rotation about it's axis.

We call this 24 hour period a day and in modern times we have chosen to have this day start for us when we are in the middle of the night.

The actual amount of light and dark during a day varies depending on your location and the time of year, because of seasons. The Earth's tilt wobbles back and forth and this is what causes the seasons. When the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, it's summer in that hemisphere, and winter in the southern hemisphere, which is tilted away at that point. Because of how light drops off due to distance, it's light longer in the summer hemisphere than the winter one.

As the seasons change, twice a year the Earth reaches a point where both hemispheres recieve the same amount of light. This is called the equinox. On this day, the equator regions of the Earth recieve 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark.

I hope this helps.

Answer 5

The first thing you have to understand is there is NO such thing as absolute time. Time is a realative commodity that exists and behaves in a given way only in a given frame of reference in space and momentum.

Now that I've totally confused you, let's look at CAT years and Human years.

If we equate CATS to Humans, the first HUMAN year since their birth is equal to 7 years in a cat for a human.

In other words, you have a human baby born on the same day as a cat is born and they live together. When the human baby is 1 year old the cat is actually 7 years ago.

The cat's maximum life span is about 20 years tops, while the baby can live to be 90, certainly 80, defeintaly 70.

So that's time in relatavistic terms. Cats proably sleep so much during a day it's because their biological clocks tell them a day is only a few hours.

So every 5 hours or so that goes by for a cat is equal to one of their days.

We are talking REALTIVE TERMS, making the CATS lifetime the same as ours, 70, 80 or 90 of THEIR YEARS, but in our time frame it's only 15-20 years.

There is a prediction, we don't know if it's true or not. But here is how it works.

You are 18, your mother is 38 and she takes a trip to the nearest star and half the speed of light, which will take about 22 years. When she comes back you are 40 and she is 39. Physically.

Because her time slowed down as a result of her high speed travel.

This has yet to be proven but when TWIN atomic clocks that keep highly accurate time are made and one is put in orbit around the Earth at 23,000 miles per hour they start to dift in sychronization.

Now, as to TIME keeping, it's simply a matter of WHOSE METHOD you chose to use.

The Jewish people say we are in the year 5800 and we say we are in the year 2007. If you go look at their ON LINE newspaper you will see BOTH DATES listed.

The Jewish people START the day at sunset. THe moment the sun's limb vanishes THAT IS A NEW DAY.

Westerners start the day at midnight. PRobably because the SUN is now starting to HEAD FOR THE EAST AND RISE.

It's arbitrary.

In Astrology circles one faction starts the process at NOON and another at MIDNIGHT.

It's arbitrary.

Some people start the day with the first light of sun over the horizon.

Time is a relative concept.

We can prove this with baking. Baking a cake at sea level takes less time than baking the same cake in Denver.

This is caused by changes in our space, in that case altitude.

Water takes longer to boil at higher altitudes than it does at sealevel with the SAME amount of heat.

So your point of view is accurate and correct.

There is NO REAL REASON, other than GENERAL ACCEPTANCE.

Time is Arbitrary, it could indeed be 7 to 7 and not 12 to 12

And when we go to Mars and live there, somone born on Mars who is measured in MARS years will be almsot twice as old in Earth Years. So a 9 year old Martian will be of legal age, because they are 18 Earth year old.

This is because it takes Mars 2 of Earths years to journey back to the same point around the sun.

Answer 6

Linda, you must understand that clocks have nothing to do with time, they were invented by humans to help them organize their days, they wanted to know when it was dinner time or bed time. A clock in your room shows 2.AM, a clock one thousand miles east of you shows 3.AM, but it is still the same time. Time is merely an interval between events, there is no past and no future, there is only NOW.

Answer 7

Wth the ancients, noon was important because it marked the middle of the day and I'm sure their economy revolved around that. Midnight just came as another natural marking the middle of the night

Answer 8

And to add to your question consider the irony:

A working clock is never 100 percent accurate, but a clock that stops running is perfectly accurate exactly twice per day.

Answer 9

inch time foot gem, each minute is worth a precious gem, inch time foot gem

thats a Zen koan. meditate on this and figure it out.

Answer 10

God created time to keep everything from happening all at once.