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Good Questions: Street Sweeping, Mirrors & Daylight Saving

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Each Friday, Heather Brown answers some of our viewers' burning questions that we didn't have a chance to get to during the week. This week, she learns about street sweeping, "objects in mirrors," and the dreaded daylight saving time.

Ruth from Minneapolis asks: What happens to all the stuff the city or county sweeps off the streets?

Depends on where you live -- some places can screen out the dirt, trash, leaves, litter, so they can recycle the sand they've put down during the icy time. But, in Minneapolis, you can imagine what they pick up is pretty gross, so it ends up in a landfill where it's used a daily cover for the landfill.

Janell from Litchfield wonders: Why are objects in your side mirror closer than they appear?

This is the law, and it's largely a a safety warning. Driver-side mirrors -- which are closer to our eyes -- are flat so they don't really have this issue. Passenger-side mirrors are convex. so they give us a wider field of view.

That means they're compressing the image of what we're seeing, just like looking at the back of a spoon. Given that we judge distance by the size, that small size distorts our perception of just how far away something is.

Tamara from Burnsville and Rodney from Benson ask: Why is daylight saving on Sunday?

In the U.S. it's always been on a Sunday -- and the reason is it would offer the least disruption to people's weekday schedules. Since it's been that way for years, it would likely cause even more confusion than it already does.

Daylight saving time starts at 2 a.m. this Sunday, March 13, in case you were wondering.

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