Time

Our ancestors has taken tremendous effort for learning the measurement of some important quantities like length, mass and time. Among these, measurement of time was very helpful discovery. Do you ever had question that, how the structure of calender was made? What was logic behind arrangement of the days, weeks, months and year in calender? The logic the these questions came from observation of solar system, based on solar system, calender is formulated which is known as solar calender.

Our ancestors must have recorded the following important observations,

  • Sun rises daily after certain period
  • When sun rises 30 times, a full moon can be seen at night
  • When 12 times full moon is visible, a seasonal changes were recorded.

After using proper mathematical rules, now we consider that duration for 30 sunrise taken as a month (days betwen the visibility of full moon to the next one), after 12 full moons observed in sky, season is repeated, hence it is taken as a year, so that one year can be of 12 months, and around 360 days approximately. (In practise it taken as duration for completeing a rotation around sun i.e. 365 days). One day (i.e. interval between 2 sunrises) is then divided into two halfs, and then further in total 24 parts, each part is taken a 1 hour.

Now in this modern world me measure each small moment also very accurately, using instruments like wall clock, digital clock, pendulul clock etc. Each moment is then referred as “TIME”.

Its interesting to know that the first clock was based on our heart beats, which were studied by scientist Sir Galileo in church. It was noticed by Sir Galileo that the pendulum in church takes same duration to complete one set of oscilation as of our beat (pulse). This observation leads the invention of first clock based on pendulum, called as pendulum clock. The clocks which we used in these era is the most complex invention to explain, but still all the base for these clocks too, came from pendulum clock. See the figure below, showing real pendulum clock discovered by sir Galileo.

As per requirement we use different units for measurement of time. Just imagine that you want to notice the time require to reach the school from your house, then its not appropriate that it can be noted in years or months, here we need small scale interval, that is minute, hour etc. Whereas to discuss the time required for earth to rotate around sun, we need to express it in years.

Units of time

  1. Small unit of time which we consider as the smallest moment covered by clock is ( It studied with second hand of clock- longest in length)
  2. Considerable moment of time which can be noticed for routine work is taken as (It studied with hour hand of clock- smaller than that of second hand)
  3. The time for longer journey, total time duration for day should be measured in such big unit taken as HOUR. (Smallest hand of clock-hour hand)
Updated: April 7, 2021 — 12:15 pm

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