Does a day begin at sunset or 12:00 a.m.?

Question

A teacher at a christian school where I also teach was talking to the class about the first and second days of the creation. She asked the question, "Does anyone know what time the day began?" Students ages eight through eleven thought the day began at 12:00 a.m. I guess I am not smarter than a fifth grader, because I thought so too, but she stated in fact the day begins at sunset because of the verse in Genesis, chapter 1:5, "And the evening and the morning were the first day."

Answer 1

Depends on whether you want to take the Creators word for it or the Pope. According to the bible, the day begins with the dark part of the day, or sundown as we call it. In the Catholic church, the pope made it midnight and it caught on I believe it was in the 1500's. Anyway, today most will go by the pope's word for it and the time is midnight but according to the bible and God, it really begins at sundown. So New Year's really can be celebrated much earlier if you want to take God's word on it.

Answer 2

The times we assign are an artifact - we say a day starts at 00:00 (12 midnight) because that is what everyone in the modern world defines as the start of the day.

For heaven's sake, Tuesday doesn't start at sunset the previous day, does it?

the 5th August doesn't start at sunset on the 4th August does it.

There is nothing mystical about the times we assign. they are just assigned for convenience. For instance everywhere on earth apart from the Greenwhich meantime longitudes, have to use a different time zone, so that their midnight IS in the middle of the night, and their midday IS in the middle of the day.

So, the answer is that the day begins at 12 am because that is how we in the modern world want it to work.

And that is how it should logically be.

Answer 3

The day begins at 12:00AM, which is midnight. This is how all time is measured in the world; I don't care what the Bible says, or what someone interprets the Bible to mean.

If you are going to the airport to take a flight that leaves at 4:00AM on the morning of June 21, you better get there before sunrise on June 21. If you think the day starts at 6:00 because that is when the sun rises, and you go to the airport 22 hours after 6:00AM June 21, that will be 4:00AM June 22 and you will miss your flight.

Answer 4

The day begins at 00:00hr and ends at 23:59:59.
A day has 24 Hours. The Am and PM system used in the US is really a leftover from the earliest days of british maritime customs when a Sailing ship's daily run was measured from Noon To Noon. ( it still is ) Noon was used because the Noon Position measurement ( made with a sextant ) was the most accurate position measurement of the day.
Local Noon is defined as the exact time the sun crosses your meridian. (the north south line going directly over your head)
That is where AM ( ante meridian ) and PM ( post meridian) come from. Since real Noon is different for every place on earth each town's church clock would show a different time. What a mess !! They finally standardized this chaos by choosing every 15 Degrees longitude as the Reference for a whole time Zone.
(It takes the sun 1 hour to travel 15 degrees across the sky.)
The reference for Eastern time is 75 degrees west longitude. Here in New york state that is not far from Albany.

Adolph

Answer 5

If she is member of a Judeo-Christian religion, then she should believe that the day begins at sunset (from old Jewish tradition). For example, the Sabbath begins at sunset.

There are some christian rites (e.g., Roman Catholics) that begin their Sunday obligations on Saturday evenings based on that concept. At first, it was linked to sunset; nowadays it is simply linked to some fixed time (e.g., 4 pm), regardless of season and length of daylight.

The extreme case being Easter celebrations which begin (in some rites) at noon on Saturday (e.g., end of lent).

In the (pre-Christian) Roman tradition (another source for our modern practises), the day began at sunrise. The hours of the day were numbered from sunrise, with the very first minutes of the day belonging to the 'first hour'. What we call noon would be at the end of the sixth hour. There were 12 hours in the day (sunrise to sunset) and the length of the hours were flexible so that there would always be 12 daylight hours in the day, whatever the season. They did not use minutes and seconds in their daily lives.

The nights would not have hours, except in the military (to divide night watches).

The Egyptians were the first to divide the night into another 12 hours (making the entire day 12+12=24) because they were the first to make timekeeping devices that were accurate enough to tell the time when the Sun was down.

The civil time in most countries now has days beginning at midnight so that one does not have to change the date at sunset while many activities are still going on. Because many city folks are still active at midnight, some time-related things are now done at 2 a.m. instead of midnight (like time changes in Spring and Fall).

Astronomers use a calendar where the day begins at noon, so that they do not have to change the date in the middle of the night. The days are simply numbered (for example, noon July 1 will be the beginning of day number 2,454,283)

Answer 6

It's a region / cultural thing. For (most) Jews and Muslims, the day begins at twilight, although there are minor differences as to when exactly it is. That is, is it calculated from the average motion of the Sun, or determined by observation (which is affected by atmospheric conditions).

For scientific work, the the notation "June 21" refers to the interval which begins at midnight, and continues to the next midnight.

So perhaps the question should be, "do observe the beginning of the day at sunset, or at midnight?", and "What does this observation or celebration consist of?"

That puts the question in terms of what people actually DO, or what their ideas are, and not in terms of "does X begin at Y?".

Answer 7

A day starts at 12:00 am., or 00:00 hundred hours. This is when your digital watch changes from one day to the next day at the stroke of midnight. Back in the biblical days they had no time pieces and if they had sun dials they would be totally useless at night. Hope I answered this the best way I could for ya.

Answer 8

12 AM

Answer 9

a second after 12:00 am

Answer 10

Technically speaking a day begins a 12:00am but in my opinion my day ends when I go to bed and the next day begins when I wake up. I don't know if it helps you but it helps me.