Welcome to the second Weekend Assignment, but before we dive into our new theme let’s explore what we learned about time.

Last Friday our fact covered Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician and scientist who invented the pendulum clock, and who also discovered Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

Another interesting thing about time is the light year. A light year is a unit of astronomical distance that uses the distance light travels in a year as a measurement, which is roughly 6 trillion miles. One of the fastest man made objects is the Voyager-1 space probe which is traveling at over 35,000 miles per hour. At its current rate of speed it would take over 20,000 years to travel 1 light year.

This weekend’s theme is invention.

Almost everything we use in the modern world had to be invented at some point. Like the pendulum clock.

The wheel is an invention that propelled humanity forward, and tools needed to be invented before we could even dream of the wheel. The axle, which allows the wheel to spin while still attached to a cart, is another invention. Even the most mundane things we use or don’t even notice had to be invented.

Your Weekend Assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to learn something new about a little known invention.

Share your discoveries with us on social media by tagging us (@saylordotorg) and using the hashtag #SaylorAssignment.

Use an invention, or two, to help you learn something new, and don’t forget to have fun.

Start the discussion at discourse.saylor.org