Today’s Solutions: November 22, 2024

On Sunday, November 3, at 2 am, we’ll turn our clocks back one hour, heralding the end of daylight saving time for much of the country. The biggest consequence: The change shifts daylight back into the morning hours.

For 9-to-5 office workers, it means saying goodbye to leaving work while it’s still light out. And for weekend workers, it means an additional glorious hour of sleep on Sunday. Hurrah! Yet there’s still a lot of confusion about daylight saving time. For instance, many people still don’t know why we need to “save” daylight hours in the summer. The answer is a bit odd because it doesn’t really entail saving daylight.

Daylight saving time in the US started as an energy conservation trick during World War I and became a national standard in the 1960s. 

The idea is that in the summer months, we shift the number of daylight hours we get into the evening. So if the sun sets at 8 pm instead of 7 pm, we’d presumably spend less time with the lights on in our homes at night, saving electricity. We agree it’s a pretty confusing name.

Anyway, with daylight savings time ending this Sunday, here are 7 more things you might like to know about “falling back”.

Solutions News Source Print this article
More of Today's Solutions

Changemakers of the week: GRuB and SparkNJ

Every day on the Optimist Daily, we report on solutions from around the world. Though we love solutions big and small, the ones that ...

Read More

The giant beneath the waves: world’s largest coral found in the Pacific

BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In a world where bad news about the environment routinely outweighs good news, scientists have discovered an incredible ...

Read More

Tortoise discovered in a home in Pompeii

Almost 2000 years after the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and its trapping of the city of Pompeii in time, archaeologists are still making discoveries ...

Read More

Revel at the most detailed image of our universe yet

Here at The Optimist Daily, we have been sharing every exciting step of the James Webb Telescope’s journey, from its long-awaited launch, to when ...

Read More