Just a second

Time was taught today.  There wasn't enough time to get it all in.

Abstract bloody measurements.  I asked one group of kids to see if they could come up with a better way to measure time.  I said that days had to stay, as that's a rotation of the Earth, and a year too as that's an orbit of the Sun (give or take 6 hours).  They actually relate to something in the real world.  Apart from that, anything goes, make it easier to deal with.

Seems to me that 1000 milliseconds in a second is the only decent bit of division that exists - bless the decimal French.  

60 seconds in a minute! 60 minutes in an hour! 24 hours in a day! Those 24 hours represented on a 12-hour clock so each time appears twice (at least 24 hour clock makes some sort of sense of the madness).  And don't get me started on weeks - why 7 days in a week? Crazy.  Of course there are 52 weeks in a year, and 7x52=364 so there are 364 days in a year, oh hang on?!?  And as for the months, some have 31 days, some have 30 and one has 28, sort of, er, I mean we add a day every 4 years because of that 6 hours I mentioned earlier.  Did you get all that kids?

Oh, and all those methods for additions, subtraction, multiplication and division we have taught you, they don't work for time because of all these abstract numbers.

I think several Popes, Emperors and Kings might be to blame.

This is why teachers hate teaching time.  It sucks.

Pope Gregory XIII clearly never taught 9 year olds time. Tosser.

So far, that group are looking at decimalising the day and splitting the year down with 5 as a key number as it divides into 365.....can't wait to see what they come up with.

Anyhoo - I bought this watch when I started my teacher training course as I wanted an accurate timepiece what with all those impending playground duties and to-the-second lesson plans we were made to write.  It synchs every night with some sort of signal and so is second perfect all the time. (It may however be superseded by a certain fruity watch when the backorders start coming through.)  It took a hit when I fell off my bike and the glass is scratched a lot now :-(  Gutted as I am quite emotionally attached to this watch.

A 1" exposure to get the second hand a second time