A Long History in Measuring Time Quiz

Answer: Zenith

A zenith occurs when the sun is directly above and objects will cast virtually no shadow. This can occur between the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn due to the tilt of the Earth's rotation. Traditionally, the zenith will occur at noon at the Tropics on the solstice which coincides with the beginning of summer in the Tropic's respective hemisphere.

Answer: water

Literally, clepsydra in Greek means "water stealer". They are older even than hourglasses, as they are mentioned in ancient Chinese scrolls dating back to 4000 BC. They were widespread in use, and were considered very accurate and versatile time measuring devices.

Modern clepsydras are not found in abundance as technology has advanced. Nevertheless, they are a novelty, and often utilize several technologies rolled into one design. A great example of this is the Hornsby Water Clock in a mall in Hornsby, Australia, which uses the principles of a clepsydra, a water-wheel clock, and a pendulum clock in one artistic design.

Answer: Bell

The word 'clock' comes from the Latin word 'clocca' which means bell. Most people believe this is in reference to the bells in the churches that would be rung every hour, and the clock would be made to ring as well for the individual owner. This is why many horologists believe in the division between clocks and their silent counterparts - the timepieces.

Answer: Galileo Galilei

Galileo Galilei was an Italian mathematician, astronomer and physicist who is commonly known as the champion of the Copernican heliocentric galaxy (the sun being at the centre of the galaxy, and not, as it was believed at the time, the Earth). However, he made other significant statements in his treatises that were outlawed by the church, one of them being that the time it takes for a pendulum to swing back and forth is constant. Though this is not entirely true (it works only for small angles), this is the basis behind the pendulum clock.

Answer: Bahá'í calendar

The Bahá'í calendar is a tropical solar calendar. The Islamic, Hebrew and Chinese calendars base their months on the revolution of the Moon and adjust accordingly for the extra or missing days. The Hebrew calendar and our Gregorian calendar, for example, coincide once every 19 years. Many solar calendars come from tropical countries close to the equator.

Answer: Babylonian

The Babylonians had a sexagesimal numbering system. This means everything was divided into sixty parts rather than the ten we are used to today. On one hand, this makes it easy to factor more numbers as sixty has twelve factors, but, on the other hand, we only have ten fingers to count on... I mean, on both hands.

Answer: True

The wristwatch was originally considered a woman's accessory. The aristocracy continued to use pocketwatches, and the common man tried to emulate them. However, with the outbreak of the war in Europe, soldiers found it more practical to wear a wristwatch to tell time rather than a pocketwatch. By 1930, the ratio of wristwatches to pocketwatches had risen to 50:1, effectively making the pocketwatch obsolete.

Technology has advanced so that wristwatches are able to withstand pressure (and thus be taken underwater), wind themselves and not need a battery, use LCD digital displays, and all sorts of other innovations in the field of horology. Nowadays, the large majority of people you see wear a wristwatch, even if they're always late.

Answer: quartz

Quartz crystals have electric properties when a physical stress is applied to them. In watches, the crystal is shaped into a sort-of tuning fork and emit a frequency of 32,768 Hz. These oscillations are counted and then a second is recorded by the timepiece.

This gives a very accurate way of measuring time, and the Swiss standard allows a timepiece of this sort to be off by only ten seconds a year.

Answer: the speed of light

Einstein postulated that the quantity that remains constant in any reference frame is the speed of light. In a vacuum, this has been measured as approximately 300 million metres per second. This broke with the Newtonian mechanics which stated that time was absolute and everything else fell into place relative to that. Einstein showed that the time slows down the faster you go, and once one reaches the speed of light, everything takes an infinitely long time to do.

Answer: Cesium

Cesium 133 is now the standard by which a second is measured. 9,192,631,770 spins, if one wants to be precise. Of course, this needs to be measured at absolute zero and with no external forces like a magnetic field or gravity.

Scientists came to the conclusion that the Earth's rotation is slowing down, and the definition for a second would not be the same depending on what year it was measured in. Certainly, this means that our clocks are not as accurate as they once were, and there is a need to insert "leap seconds" into our life, otherwise the world may stop spinning entirely and some terrible catastrophe may occur.