9781422283363

Probably the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning is to wonder what the time is. But have you ever wondered what time is? Chapter WHAT TIME IS IT? Take a look at your watch or at a clock. What does it tell you? You might answer that it tells you the time—eight o’clock, half past eleven, quarter to four, whatever it happens to be. If you have a digital watch you might say that the time is 0800, 11:30 or 1545. What is it that these numbers are telling you? Perhaps that it will soon be time to go to school, or time to have lunch, or time to watch your favorite TV program, or time to go home. IT TAKES TIME Knowing what the time is can be very useful. We use time to keep our lives in order—it lets us know when to do things, or when something will happen. If you say to someone, “I’ll meet you at five o’clock,” they will know when to expect you. If you want to watch a television program you can look in a newspaper to find out what time it is on. Then you won’t miss it. You can look in a timetable to find out when a train will arrive (if it is on time). Everything takes time. We can split time up into as many different bits as we want to. People who study history may look at events that happened hundreds of year ago. Photographers can set their cameras to take pictures in less than a thousandth of a second. We have watches and clocks to measure minutes and hours. Many people keep diaries to remind them of what is happening from day to day. We also have calendars which measure weeks and months and give us useful bits of information, such as the dates of people’s birthdays and holidays.

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