دیکشنری

TIME

What time is it? I don't have enough time. Is it time to go yet? Hurry up! We're going to be late

We talk about time everyday. We measure it by the second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and century. But what is time? No one can say exactly what it is. It is one of the greatest mysteries of our lives

We don't know exactly what time is, but our ability to measure it is very important. It makes our way of life possible. All the members of a group have to measure time in the same way

Time lets us put things in a definite order. We know that breakfast comes before lunch. The reading class is after the writing class. Children can't play until school is over. Time enables us to organize our lives

The earliest people saw changes around them. They saw day and night, the changes of the moon, and the seasons. They started measuring their lives by these changes

Then people started inventing clocks. The Chinese invented a water clock in the eleventh century, but the Egyptians had them long before that. As water dripped from one container to another, it measured the passing time

Clocks as we know them were probably developed by very religious people in Europe in the thirteenth century. They needed to know the exact time so they could pray at the right times. By the 1700s, people had clocks and watches that were accurate to the minute. Some clocks were beautiful. They had very complicated moving parts. Some had figures of people or animals that moved on the hour or quarter hour. Others played music. The movement of the parts is beautiful to watch when you open these clocks

Today's clocks and watches have quartz crystals. They are very accurate, but they are not beautiful to watch. You cannot even open them to see the inside

People in different countries look at time differently. In some countries being on time and organizing everything by exact time is very important. In other countries people are more relaxed about time. It doesn't matter if someone is late. In fact, people might consider it rude if you are exactly on time

No matter how we look at a time, it is very important to us. Clocks change the way we look at the world. Clocks measure time, but nobody knows what it is. This is one of the mysteries of life

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