Time - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) 5 weeks. The start was moved up four weeks, from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March (some years will have a three week difference), and the end was moved back one week from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.
• A2) Summer. In 2007, it will last 93 days, while spring is 92 days, autumn 90, and winter 89 (ending in 2008). The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit can be thanked for this oddity.
• A3) Hourglass. The spiders sport a red hourglass-shaped marking, the second novel is titled "Bearing an Hourglass", and the evil sorcerer Jafar holds Jasmine captive in an supersized hourglass.
• A4) Gnomon. In 1966, MIT engineering graduate students borrowed the Greek word, meaning "indicator", for their new copy shop, Gnomon Copy.
• A5) Water. The Egyptians began using the relatively inaccurate measuring devices as far back as the 16th century B.C.
• A6) 11 days. The day after September 2, 1754 was September 14, 1754. George Washington was born on February 11, 1732 by the old system and February 22 by the new.
• A7) Cesium. One second has equaled 9,192,631,770 transition cycles between two radiation states of the cesium-133 atom since 1967.
• A8) 24 leap years. Every fourth year from 2004 to 2096 is a leap year, while 2100 is not a leap year because it is not divisible by 400.
• A9) Common. Common years have 365 days, and leap years have 366.
• A10) 7 years. The last two leap seconds were observed on December 31, 1998 and December 31, 2005. The shortest gap was six months between the first two leap seconds, as the second one occurred on December 31, 1972.
• A11) B. Planck time. This is the time (5.4x10^-44 seconds) a photon needs to cover one Planck length (1.6x10^-35 meters) at light speed. The prefix "yocto-" means 10^-24, "zepto-" means 10^-21, and "atto-" means 10^-18.
• A12) B. Thousands of minutes in a month. A month can range from 40.3 (40,320 minutes in a non-leap February) to 44.6 (44,640 minutes in a 31-day month). There are 36 hundred seconds in an hour, about 31.5 million seconds in a year (31.6 leap), and just under 31.7 years in a billion seconds.