Saturday, November 5, 2011

Curriculum Resource: Daylight Savings Time

Do readers out there have a hard time explaining daylights saving time to their children or students, or am I the only one?  Every year, my husband and go over the whole "Fall Back, Spring Forward" and have to re-decode what that means, let alone explain to our son why we are doing it.

Well, this year I can defer questions to an expert!

Science Jim is a wonderful science teacher who lives and teaches here in the Triangle NC region, but who also offers a number of online webinars. He's a really fun, lively guy who is a great teacher in person, but who has enough personality that he can hold kids' attention even online.

So the following is a short video of one of the online webinars he did in the past that he shares on his website for free.  He talks about some physical notions about time (like how it doesn't exist), theories on the historical development of time, puts in a plug for switching to a metric time system (one of my son's favorite suggestions), before discussing the rationale for Daylight Savings Time.  Then at the end, he comes up with an experiment that may help you get rid of some of that leftover Halloween candy (without you or your children having to eat it).

It's geared a little young for middle schoolers, but he's entertaining to watch anyway for a review of the whole concept of time.  But if you don't want to hear that, you can skip down to about minute 14 for the Daylight Saving Time business.

You can watch the video below, or else visit his website:

Science Jim Show: Time and Candy! from Science Jim on Vimeo.

We love Science Jim!

And enjoy your extra hour of sleep, everyone!

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