AM/PM

There is a difference from day and night. Day is bright and night is dark. Day is when we awake and do our business and stuff and night is when we sleep.

At least that is the way the animals do it.

But animals don’t wear watches. How do they know AM from PM?

The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods: a.m. (from Latin ante meridiem, translating to before midday) and p.m. (from Latin post meridiem translating to after midday).

Each period consists of 12 hours numbered: 12 (acting as zero), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. The 24-hour/day cycle starts at 12 midnight (usually indicated as 12 a.m.), runs through 12-noon (usually indicated as 12 p.m.), and continues just before midnight at the end of the day.

The 12-hour clock was developed from the middle of the second millennium BC to the 16th century AD.

If your body clock runs on the sundial, it will tell you when to wake up and when to go to sleep.

Yet we can adjust ourselves if we work the night shift or have late nights or early morning commutes. It may be difficult if your friends don’t work the same schedules or you can’t conform to the normal 9-5 workdays.

It seems 4AM is an important time. I wake every morning at 4AM. No matter if I went to sleep at 7PM or 1AM, I wake at 4AM. It is mostly to go down the hall to empty but I’m fully awake. I could start the day then and have sometimes. Yet it is dark and all around me is quiet, but it is a great time to write or draw or listen to music (if you don’t turn it up too loud). Still this is a different time of the day. Wander outside and see who else is up and about.

BC/AD

As we all know Jesus was born on Christmas Day so we could all get presents from Santa, but the New Year calendar starts 38 days later.

Before Christ, an epoch used in dating years prior to the estimated birth of Jesus in the Julian and Gregorian calendars

The terms (AD) anno Domini and (BC) before Christ are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars.

The term anno Domini is Medieval Latin and means “in the year of the Lord”, but is often presented using “our Lord” instead of “the Lord”, taken from the full original phrase “anno Domini nostri Jesu Christi”, which translates to “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

This calendar era is based on the traditionally reckoned year of the conception or birth of Jesus of Nazareth, with AD counting years from the start of this epoch, and BC denoting years before the start of the era.

There is no year zero in this scheme, so the year AD 1 immediately follows the year 1 BC. This dating system was devised in 525 by Dionysius Exiguus of Scythia Minor, but was not widely used until after 800.

We mark our time on this planet with a start date and an end date. We figure how many rotations we enjoyed but not if we are an ‘early bird’ or a ‘night owl’.

Turn your alarm off and see what happens.