Anyone Got the Time? Quiz | Technology and Computers

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. The earliest "clock" was first used between 5000 and 3500 B.C.E. Its original name was "gnomon". Around 2000 B.C.E. Egyptians and Babylonians built tall obelisks that served the same purpose as a gnomon, allowing citizens to determine time of day. In modern times, many homes have smaller versions of this 'dial in their gardens, often made of stone. What celestial body is necessary to determine the time from this kind of clock?

Answer: Sun

Sundials lost favor as the main means of keeping time in the 1700s with the wide use of clocks and watches. A problem with the use of sundials as a means of keeping accurate time in modern times, is that because of the Earth's rotation, every sundial has a different "noon" and each sundial would have to be specifically calibrated so that all sundials in the same time zone would have the same time. "Noon" is defined as the time of day when the Sun is at its highest point in the sky, also known as its zenith.

2. There is some controversy over the significance of the Sun in the design of a pre-historic spherical English monument. Some think the Sun at the summer solstice influenced the design because of the Sun's location over the monument's famous "Heel Stone". Others argue that it was some kind of ancient calendar. Still others believe it was created by aliens. What is this ancient site?

Answer: Stonehenge

Stonehenge is located in Wiltshire, England. Carbon dating (done in 2008) places the erection of the first stones at Stonehenge to be between 2400 and 2000 B.C.E. though some believe that the first of the stones may date back to 3000 B.C.E.

3. Water clocks were developed to overcome the shortcomings of time keeping devices that required celestial bodies to keep time. They could also be used as timers. Which of the following is NOT true of the early water clocks?

Answer: The clocks required three water chambers for water flow and collection.

The earliest water clocks used one or two chambers containing water. They used bowls with holes in the center that would allow water to flow through as the bowl dropped, keeping time. The clocks could also work by adding water to raise bowls, instead of lowering them. To match the time on sundials, the clocks had to be constantly adjusted so that there were 12 hours each day and 12 hours each night. Early water clocks were used to time speeches, most notably in Athens's law courts.

In order to work, the clocks required a constant flow and pressure of water.

They could be stopped by placing a plug in the hole that allowed water to pass.

4. Grandfather clocks are a type of pendulum clock that has been around for centuries. They are notoriously bad for keeping accurate time. The first design for a grandfather clock was made in 1582. Who was responsible for this design?

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei drew up the first design for what we call a "grandfather clock" in 1582. Then, in 1656, Christiaan Huygens built the very first working grandfather clock based on Galileo's discovery that pendulums could be used to keep time. These early grandfather clocks could lose up 10 minutes a day, and were redesigned with a longer pendulum in 1670 by William Clement.

The longer pendulum required a longer casing to hold it, and were named "long case clocks". In 1721, George Graham discovered that temperature changes could affect the speed of the pendulum and created a new design that would be accurate to within a second per day, instead of 10 minutes.

5. In 1927, Warren Marrison, a Canadian telecommunications engineer, invented a new kind of clock. This new oscillator clock was extremely accurate and worked on vibrations of a crystal in an electrical circuit. In the 1940s, many laboratories around the world switched from mechanical clocks to this new kind of clock. This new clock proved that the Earth, and its relationship to celestial bodies, was not a reliable way to keep time. A crystal of what mineral was used in this new clock?

Answer: Quartz

Warren Marrison used the principle of piezoelectricity developed by G.W. Pierce, and W.G. Cady as the basis of his new quartz clock design. A similar oscillating device to the one Marrison designed is used today in modern electronic watches, which are based on the regular vibrations of the quartz.

6. The most accurate clocks in existence today are atomic clocks. The first atomic clocks, developed by Isidor Rabi, were based on vibrations of ammonia molecules. There are three elements that are commonly used in atomic clocks today and serve the same purpose in the clocks as the ammonia. Two of these elements are Hydrogen and Rubidium. The third element is the basis of the scientific definition of a second. What is this element?

Answer: Cesium

Isidor Rabi, a professor of physics, began work in 1930 on the technique of atomic beam magnetic resonance. Nineteen years later he had adapted the technique into a working atomic clock. The first cesium atomic clocks were created in 1952. The most accurate cesium atomic clock, called NIST-F1, was built in 1991, and is accurate to 1 second every 20 million years.

The scientific definition of a "second" is the amount of time it takes a Cs-133 isotope at 0 Kelvin, to internally oscillate 9,192,631,770 times.

The oscillation referred to is the transition between the two levels of "ground state" that occur in Cs-133 atoms.

7. GMT was established in 1884. GMT is what all the times of the world were based on until UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) was standardized in 1961. It was set as the standard at the International Meridian Conference when the location of the Prime Meridian was decided. What does GMT stand for?

Answer: Greenwich Mean Time

Greenwich Mean Time is the time set at the Prime Meridian that passes through Greenwich, England, and was once the standard base time for ALL other times around the world. 12 hours from the Prime Meridian, on the other side of the world, is the International Date Line.

The recognized Prime Meridian that immediately preceded the meridian through Greenwich, passed through the Saint-Sulpice Cathedral in Paris, France. This meridian is seen today, marked with brass disks, set into the streets of Paris.

These disks are also seen in buildings, beginning in the Cathedral, but also seen, famously, in the Musee du Louvre.

8. In addition to keeping time through clocks and watches, the passing of time is tracked on calendars. One very famous calendar is the Chinese Zodiac Calendar. This calendar is linked to Chinese legends and myths and the calendar itself consists of 12 periods (the 12 signs of the Zodiac). Each animal has specific character traits attached to it. The Chinese Zodiac Calendar dates back more than 2,000 years. Of the following, which is not one of the 12 animals used as the signs of the Zodiac?

Answer: Cat

The 12 signs of the Zodiac, in order, are the Rat, the Ox, the Tiger, the Rabbit, the Dragon, the Snake, the Horse, the Goat, the Monkey, the Rooster, the Dog, and the Pig. The year 2012 (when this quiz was made), corresponded to the Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dragon.

9. Most people are familiar with the Mayan Calendar, but only in passing. The last day of the Mayan Calendar corresponds to December 21, 2012, the Winter Solstice. The calendar known as the Mayan Calendar was not invented by the Mayans, but was in use by most pre-Columbian Central American people. The Aztec and the Toltec, for example, used the same calendar, but changed the names of the months and the days of the week. The Calendar consists of three different but corresponding calendars that work together cyclically. Which of the following is NOT one of the three calendars that together make up the Mayan Calendar?

Answer: The Uayeb

The three parts to the Mayan Calendar are the Haab, the Tzolkin, and the Long Count. The Haab is a 365 day calendar based on the Sun. These 365 days are divided into 19 months. Eighteen of these months are 20 days long. The remaining month only consists of five days, and is called the Uayeb. Similar to the Chinese Zodiac Calendar, the months of the Mayan Calendar are represented in an outer ring of glyphs that, in addition to denoting the month, have a personality.

The Tzolkin is the divine calendar, also known as the Sacred Round. Tzolkin means "the distribution of days".

It looks similar to the Haab, with glyphs representing days (260 days, 20 periods of 13) numbered 1 to 13. This calendar was used to determine ceremonial and religious events.

The third calendar is the Long Count. This calendar is astronomical and is what the Mayans called the "universal cycle". Each cycle lasts 2,880,000 days. The Mayans believed that the universe was destroyed and recreated at the start of each new cycle.

The start of the current cycle (that ends December 21, 2012) began on August 11, 3114 B.C.E (according to the Modern Gregorian Calendar).

10. The Calendar we use today is the Gregorian Calendar, but before the Gregorian Calendar was adopted in 1582, the world used the Julian Calendar. The Julian Calendar consisted of 12 months, and also included a Leap Day every four years. In 45 B.C.E. when Julius Caesar created his calendar, he reorganized the months from the previously used Roman Calendar, adding days to create a calendar of 365 days. In honor of Julius Caesar, and his great-nephew Caesar Augustus (formerly Octavian), the Romans changed the names of the 7th and 8th calendar months from "Quintilis" and "Sextilis" to "Iulius" and "Augustus", respectively. Today, we call the eighth calendar month "August". What do we call the seventh calendar month?

Answer: July

What we call "The Calendar" (the international civic calendar) today is what is known as the Gregorian Calendar. It is named for Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it in February 1582. The Gregorian Calendar includes a concept we know as a "Leap Year". "Leap Year" in the Gregorian calendar, occurs ever year that is divisible by 4, but not by 100 (except if divisible by 400). 2000 A.D. was a Leap Year because it is divisible by 400.

The Gregorian Calendar replaced the Julian Calendar (developed by Julius Caesar) which was very similar. With the introduction of his calendar, Julius Caesar reorganized the months into the 12 months we see today.

The Roman Calendar, which preceded the Julian Calendar, had two phases. The first Roman calendar had 10 months of 30 or 31 days each, totaling 304 days a year plus a 61-day "winter" that was unaccounted for.

These months were: Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Iunius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December. In the next phase, a 12-month Roman Calendar, the months Ianuarius and Februarius (formerly "winter") were added.

Source: Author kaddarsgirl

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor CellarDoor before going online.
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Anyone Got the Time? Trivia Quiz

"TIME: The indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole." (from Oxford Dictionary) This quiz is about various ways of keeping time throughout history and around the world.

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