• Question: Why do we need to tell time?

    Asked by asiansupreme to Anil, Blanka, Cees, Emma, Mike on 2 Jul 2012. This question was also asked by lionalmessi.
    • Photo: Blanka Sengerova

      Blanka Sengerova answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Time has only been significant in society in recent time, relatively speaking (escpecially since th industrial revolution), and is probably important to the economy. If you have a job and need to be doing it for 8 hours a day you need to be able to tell the time, right?

      In the era of the prehistoric man (and woman) and even much later than that, people were simply living their lives based on light/dark difference, probably slowing down during the winter months when days are much shorter.

      Why do YOU think we need to tell time?

    • Photo: Michael Cook

      Michael Cook answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Time is really useful for all sorts of things!

      The most important thing, I think, is that time helps us co-operate with other people. Because we all use the same idea of time, it lets us organise when to meet people, things to work on together, and when certain things will happen.

      It also lets us communicate much better with people – we can say exactly when something happened in the past, or compare two things based on the time.

    • Photo: Emma Trantham

      Emma Trantham answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      As Blanka said, in modern days we need to be able to tell the time so we can get to work on time and finish on time etc.

      Back in history the time would have been told based on the position of the sun (so for example people might have decided to have lunch when the sun was at its highest position in the sky).

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