What is time?
Time can be defined as a measurable period. It is used to measure the duration of events. We use time to find out how long it takes to clap our hands, sing a song or to finish our history class and so on.
All happenings and events must pass through time. What happened before is the `past’, what is happening now is the `present’ and what will happen later is the `future’. Times moves from the past to the present to the future.
How do we measure time?
Time measured in seconds, minute, hour, days, weeks, months or years. We use clocks and colanders to measure time. Clock gives us time in seconds, minutes and ours, while colanders gives us time in days, weeks, months and years. Since we can measure time, we can exactly say that a day has twenty –four hours or revolution of the earth around the sun takes one year.
What is change?
Sometimes our elders say that things changing. It is true. We live in a changing world.
Change me the process of becoming different. When people and things become different we say that they have changed. Change can be seen many ways. It can be seen in appearances, that is, the way people and things look, the way we think and behave, the way things are done, the way things are used, etc.
Time line
A time line is a list of activities or events, as they happen one after another. For example, to make lemonade, you must first collect all the ingredients. Then cut the lemon, squeeze the lime to get the juice, remove the seeds, and finally add the required amount of water and sugar.
In other words, the past is the foundation o the present and the present is the foundation of the future.
The present come after the past and similarly, the present will lead to the future.
We can take any period of time and see what special things or events happened during that time. A timeline is generally used to mark these special events and important changes. The study of the arrangement of events in the order in which they occurred is called chronology.
Look at this time line
Family time line
Milestones
Year - particulars
a) 1983 my parents wedding
b) 1987 my sister is born
c) 1988 my birth
d) 1990 I walked
e) 1992 my first cycle
f) 1993 off to school
g) 1996 to Disneyland
h) 1997 my first pet-dog
Timelines usually show changes over a long period of time. Longer time period are given 1) specific names, for example:-a decade is period o ten years.
2) A century is a period of 100 years.
3) A millennium is a period of 1000 years.
The timeline human civilization is expressed in centuries and millenniums.
Use of timeline: timelines help in the following ways.
a) assessing usefulness o information collected
b) classifying changes and developments
c) comparing stages and changes
d) Predicting the future.
Types of changes
1) When we add sugar to lemonade, it becomes sweet.
But can you change the lemonade back into sugar and time?
Have you seen?
a) A Flower grows back into a bud?
b) Your friend grows younger and moves from class 3 to class 2?
Changes can be liner or cyclical. Some changes, such as day and night and water cycle are repeated over and over again in cycles. Such changes are called cyclical changes.
Changing lifestyle
What else do you know that change or grows with time?
Many things around us in our lives change. These can be seen in lifestyles –food, clothing, pastimes, houses and buildings, transport, communication, shops, etc. For example, twenty years ago no one had heard of a cell phone; ten years ago some people used cell phones; to day nearly everyone uses a cell phone. Similarly there are many other things we use today that did not exit sometime ago.
a) Will things change?
b) What will these changes be like?
c) How quickly will they change?
d) Will these changes be good for us?
The only thing hat we can be sure of: things are changing and will change for the better.