Mavamath

CULTURAL PROGRAM: «The counting of time and the calendar systems» 

Secondary school of Rentina (prefecture of Thessaloniki, Greece) 

In this program, the main goal was to gather information and study the following:

• The concept of time (in physics, philosophy, day to day life, biology, etc)
• The calendar systems (solar, lunisolar, lunar calendars)
• The calendars of the past and their differences as well as the most recent calendars and the transition from the Julian to Gregorian calendar
• How do we measure time from the ancient years? (sundials, clepsydras, candles, astrolabes, mechanical clocks, atomic clocks, etc)
• Create our own Maths clocks

7 different Maths clocks were created using wood at the back.  After we set up the clock mechanisms on the clocks, we placed them in the entrance of our school, over the school canteen. The clocks show the local time of 7 randomly chosen towns of all over the world representing all the continents.

The clocks have three basic areas – features:

• in the center of the clock there are geometric shapes like circles, semicircles, parallelograms, squares, trapezium, rhombus, polygons etc.
• the numbers showing the time are numerical expressions
• in the periphery of the clock, the basic information of our program on: on the top of the clock the name of the program is placed (Η μέτρηση του χρόνου και τα ημερολογιακά  συστήματα) and at the bottom the name of our school (Γυμνάσιο Ρεντίνας), as well as the year and the class (Γ2013) and the words “cultural program” (Πολιτιστικό πρόγραμμα)