Daylight Savings
By: Julia Zhou
3/13/21
If you take a look at the calendar, you’ll see that March 14th is marked: Daylight Savings Begins. No, this is not a national holiday, so sit right back in your seat before you run off thinking you’ll get a day off from school. Daylight savings time (DST), daylight savings, or summer time is a practice during which most people set their clocks an hour ahead. But why?
Benjamin Franklin first thought up the idea of daylight savings. During his time in Paris, France, he wrote a letter back to the colonies of his idea: during the summer, time should be thought of as an hour later, so that extra sunlight could be enjoyed and energy could be saved. The science behind it?
There’s actually not much science behind daylight savings time. If a person’s full-time job ended at 6:00, since during the summer the Sun begins to set later, and they’ll end work earlier than usual, they’ll have more sunlight in the evening to enjoy. To summarize, daylight savings is beneficial to people with set hours of work and play: Adults with full-time jobs and children in school. With daylight savings, an extra hour will be available.
When daylight saving time first began a century after Benjamin Franklin thought of it, farmers and early risers claimed setting clocks and general understanding of time ahead would cut short their morning light. However, daylight savings has been widely accepted in most households.
With an extra hour of daylight for recreation, less electricity will be used. Observe your parents: do they practice daylight savings?
Sources:
livescience.com
webexhibits.org