What is time? - Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Time is like a ruler we use to measure how long things happen.

Imagine you're playing with your favorite toy, say, building blocks. When you start stacking them, that’s the beginning of something. When you finish and sit back, that’s the end. The space between those two moments is time.

Like a Clock in Your Hands

Think about a clock, it's like a friend who counts every second, minute, and hour for you. When you're playing with blocks for 10 minutes, your clock shows that time has passed by ticking from one number to the next.

Time Helps Us Know When Things Happen

Time is also like a schedule. It tells us when it's breakfast time, nap time, or playtime. Without time, we wouldn’t know when to stop playing and go to bed, or when to start school in the morning!

So time helps us measure how long things last, just like a ruler measures how long a block is. And just like you can count blocks one by one, you can also count seconds, minutes, and hours!

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Examples

  1. Understanding how a sundial works to measure the passing of time.
  2. Learning that time is not always the same for everyone, like on a fast-moving train.
  3. Realizing that your day has 24 hours because Earth takes that long to spin around once.

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