Time Change Internal Clock Daylight Savings Time
While you may not have thought about it, we do have our own, built-in clocks. This internal clock may not be as accurate as the one on the wall (and mine is definitely a bit slow), but it is surprising how well your body keeps track of time.
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This Week's Experiment - #214 Fooling Your Clock
We changed to daylight savings time this weekend and I thought that this
would be an interesting time to try an experiment with your internal clock.
Making the change on April 1, which we celebrate as April Fool's Day in the
USA, also seems appropriate. April Fool's Day is a day for playing harmless
tricks, so we will try to learn something from the trick Daylight Savings
Time plays on your internal clock. You will need:
yourself
a notepad or computer to keep a journal
a clock
While you may not have thought about it, we do have our own, built-in clocks.
This internal clock may not be as accurate as the one on the wall (and mine
is definitely a bit slow), but it is surprising how well your body keeps
track of time. To investigate this, I want you to keep a journal for the
coming week. Pay attention to the things that you usually do every day at
the same time. For instance, getting up. Whether you are getting up for
school or work, you probably get up at the same time on most days. If you
are in the USA or other parts of the northern hemisphere that observes
daylight savings time, you have probably just set your clock back one hour.
That means that if you usually get up at 6:00 AM, your body will think that
you are getting up at 5:00 AM instead. Each morning when you get up, notice
if you feel more sleepy than usual. Keep track of how many days it takes for
you to get your internal clock reset to your new schedule.
You can do the same thing with going to bed. Notice if you get sleepy at an
earlier time than you usually do. Pay attention to when you get hungry. You
might even keep track of things like remembering your favorite TV show. Do
you think of it just as it is going off? If other family members are willing
to keep a journal as well, you can compare to see how well each one adapts to
the change.
It really is amazing how well your internal clock works. It varies a lot
from person to person, but many people will wake up close to the proper time,
even if the alarm does not go off. As I child, I would wake up automatically
at 6:30 AM every Saturday morning to watch Superman on TV. Of course that
did not work for school days, when I would sleep as long as I could.
Your pets have internal clocks too. Our dog Calley knows that her supper
time is 6:00 PM and is accurate to within minutes, letting me know that it is
time to stop what I am doing and feed her. Pay attention to your dog, cat,
fish, etc., and you will probably find that they know when it is feeding
time, even before you start to prepare the food. This should be a good week
to observe that as well. In fact, our dog Calley is letting me know very
strongly that it is time for me to feed her, so I had better get this out and
start feeding. Have a good week.
From Robert Krampf's Science Education Company
PO Box 60982
Jacksonville, FL 32236-0982
904-388-6381
krampf@aol.com
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