Making Hour Learning Meaningful

by Emanuel Lubetski:

In Mishna class, we did a project to help us better understand the concept of shaos zimaniyos. In order to demonstrate shaos zimaniyos, Rabbi Geffner made a contraption with 12 dividers representing the 12 hours of the day. Sliding blocks attached to the dividers. With one representing netz and the other shkiya, the blocks were moved forward and back to represent shorter or longer days. Moving the blocks expanded the compartments - when expanded they were able to fit more bottle caps, which represent minutes. When the blocks were contracted, each divider was able to fit less bottle caps.