Serious thread?
Beats me but I wanted to jump through my radio to wring the neck of the lady who insisted to Ron that DST involved an actual change in the Amount of Sunlight we get; as if tonight the Earth goes into some weird part of its orbit that suddenly gives or takes an hour of sun away.
Thank christ Ron knows more then a little bit about Astronomy. His response was great.
Farmers?
Energy Conservation?
Beats the shit outta me; I've heard those and plenty more. The best explanation I ever heard though, wish I knew who it was, explained it along the lines of this:
The sun is getting up earlier and earlier each day, so we change the clocks so that we get up earlier too.
Simple. Wonderful. A true Answer, Knowing Something as opposed to Knowing What something Is.
Example: Stolen from Feynman
You put a ball in a wagon, and you pull the wagon. The ball rolls to the back of the wagon. Why?
One Answer: Inertia.
Another Answer: Nobody has any idea whatsoever why the ball rolls back. None. However, when we look around in nature; we see that often things that are rolling keep rolling until something stops them. We also see that things standing still tend to stay that way; unless pushed or pulled.
So; if you look sideways at the wagon, you will see that the ball isn't really rolling to the back of the wagon, the wagon is moving and the ball is staying where it was.
There's a name for this, and it's called Inertia, but the name gives you Absolutely NOTHING that really answers the question. There's a huge difference between knowing the Name of something; and Knowing something.
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Not stolen from Feynman:
If we could teach Knowing stuff, instead of knowing the Names of stuff? We might begin to address the utterly horrific science illiteracy that plagues that nation.
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