Can every adult determine what a day is? If you think about it, we often call this word only the time when we are awake, equating them to the day. But this is not true. It will take quite a bit of time to figure this out once and for all.
What do the reference book and dictionary say about this?
If you look into them, you will find several interpretations of the word. And the first of the answers to the question, what is a day, there is such a definition: a unit of time, which is equal to the approximate value of the period of revolution of the planet Earth around its axis. Why approximate? Because it is not even, but has minutes and even seconds. To be precise, then 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds. It is not possible to divide them into an even number of parts. Yes, and up to 24 hours is missing quite a bit.
But the theory does not stop there. It turns out that the day can be sunny and stellar, planetary and used in civilian life.
In order to determine what a day is, you will need to select any point in time and count from it 24 hours. Typically, the count of the day begins at sunrise, although it is more convenient to count from midnight. That is, from the hour when the new calendar day begins.
How is the division of the day?
Firstly, in 24 equal parts. The answer to the question logically follows from this: in days, how many hours? Namely 24. Each of them consists of 60 minutes. So, in just a day 1440 minutes. But that’s not all, the latter are divided into seconds. Their number is 86,400.
Secondly, there is such a thing as the time of day. In other words, morning, day, evening and night. Here the division is no longer as unambiguous as in the previous paragraph. This is due to the subjective perception of the day by each person and different peoples. Yes, and technical development has erased the boundaries between the concepts of "morning" and "day." If earlier the morning came at sunrise, because only then it was possible to start working on the street, now now using artificial street lighting you can work in the fresh air even at night.
Nevertheless, technological progress and the ability to communicate with people from different countries required the introduction of a single division. Therefore, the time of day by the hour became like this:
- from midnight to 6 hours - night;
- the next six hours - morning;
- 6 hours in the afternoon - day;
- the last six hours is evening.
What day divisions were in the past?
The Arab peoples, for example, highlighted such moments of the development of the day:
- dawn;
- Sunrise;
- the time of his movement in the sky;
- call;
- dusk;
- time when there is no sun in the sky, that is, night.
But the natives of the islands of the Society in those days when Cook discovered them, divided the day into 18 intervals. Moreover, each of them was different in duration. The shortest parts of the day were morning and evening. The greatest duration was attributed to midnight and noon.
What words exist in Russian to determine the time of day?
In addition to the generally accepted large segments, such as morning with day and evening with night, there are even smaller ones. Moreover, they are given their own names.
The first of these concepts is “dimming”. That is the time when it’s still or already dark. This happens just before dawn, and also immediately after sunset.
The next day comes dawn, its other name is dawn. It precedes the sunrise. That is, during it already dawns, but the sun is still hidden behind the horizon.
The third period is sunrise. It is associated with the direct appearance of the star in the sky.
The culmination of the movement of the sun is associated with the following time of day - noon. Toward evening, there comes a time, which is commonly called "dawn." By analogy with the term "dark" is the gap when it is still light.
Sunset is associated with a time when the sun hides beyond the horizon. Immediately after sunset, a half-light sets in, which is commonly called twilight.
And what is larger than a day?
It is logical that the week, month and year. Therefore, after solving the question of what a day is, you will want to understand the definitions of the remaining units of time.
The smallest of them is a week. It consists of seven days. The calendar starts from Monday and ends on Sunday. But it can be any sequence of seven consecutive days.
A little larger month. It contains from 28 to 31 days. The difference in this amount depends on the non-integer value of the lunar month, which is slightly more than twenty-eight days. Initially, the number of days in the months alternated and it was 30, then 31. And one, the last of the year - February - turned out to be the shortest. It was 29 days old. But over time, small changes have occurred. One of the months - July - was named in honor of Julius Caesar (the emperor was born this month). The ruler was replaced by Augustus. By the decision of the emperor, one of the summer months began to bear his name. The number of days in it was also changed to 31. It was decided to pick it up from that month, which is already the shortest. So, February has become another day less.
The largest unit of time in the calendar was the year. And he, too, was not an integer. Therefore, its value ranges from 365 to 366. The first value is accepted for simple years, and the second corresponds to leap years. The second gives February the opportunity to become somewhat longer. Namely, exactly for a day.