You’re traveling through an inexplicable dimension — a dimension without which your mind could experience neither sight nor sound. Along this wondrous journey of perception we establish milestones of memory. This dimension is time. As H.G. Wells has his Time Traveler state, “Any real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and Duration.” Albert Einstein demonstrated in his Theory of Special Relativity that we are always moving at the speed of light, if not in space, then in time, but usually in both. The measurement of time is perhaps the earliest application of mathematics to the description of nature and so is at the very foundation of science. The accurate measurement of the passage of time is an essential part of our technological civilization, allowing a multiple of applications, but its principal use remains the coordination of activities.
Until recently, time was usually available to most people by reading analog clocks, where the rotation of the hands around the dial represents the rotation of the Earth on its axis. While many of us now get our time reading from digital clocks on cell phones and computer screens, analog clocks and watches continue to be popular for aesthetic reasons and because the angles and motions of the hands give visual cues to the passage of time, just as graphs give a more pictorial representation of data than is shown on tables.
Many people collect watches and clocks due to interest in their mechanisms and their historical associations. Timepieces may be valued in part due to having them handed down through family lines. The accuracy of some of these old clocks and watches can be remarkable even by modern standards.
Analog clocks on classroom walls were always standard equipment during my public school student days in the 1950s and ‘60s, including attendance in 3 different high schools in 3 different states. Reading them is still a major component of primary grade education, as I have found in substitute teaching in these grades in local school districts. For instance, many 1st graders in a class at Yokayo Elementary School in Ukiah can read analog clocks to the nearest 5 minute interval, something I couldn’t do until 3rd grade. On the other hand, several times high school students have confessed to me their inability to read time on an analog clock.
Before my retirement as a high school science teacher assigning laboratory exercises when the standard wall clock provided by the school moved in 1 minute incremental jumps, I was lucky enough to retrieve from the school’s garbage a plug-in electric clock with a sweep second hand, so students could make data readings every 15 or 30 seconds, as appropriate to the activity. I kept this clock even after the official school clock was replaced with a model having a sweep second hand.
Returning to the classroom as a substitute teacher I admit to having been quite surprised to find that I cannot rely on there being an accurate wall clock coordinated with the bell system in all classrooms. Some classrooms lack a clock altogether and some have quartz clocks with dead batteries. I always carry a spare battery. In one case I found the clock hidden on a bookshelf, mounted it on the wall and then found it entirely removed the next time I was in that class. Another teacher has hidden his wall clock behind a poster. Consequently I recently purchased a quartz battery electric clock to carry with me to many jobs and set it to by synchronized with that school’s bell schedule. This allows me and the students as well to manage available time as a resource. However, many school time systems do not conform to accepted standards. Recently I was at a school whose bell schedule deviated from National Institutes of Science and Technology time by 150 seconds!
Being a substitute teacher and having to deal with the idiosyncrasies of unfamiliar students, thermostats, telephones, and other tools of the trade, as well a special bell schedules, it is a bit much to expect me to operate efficiently without constant and ready access to time data. Teachers, asking a guest teacher to lead your class without an accurate wall clock is like asking a stranger to drive your car with a broken fuel gauge. I hope all schools and classroom teachers will prioritize and facilitate access to standardized time in their classrooms in the upcoming year.
Steve Harness is a resident of Witter Springs
