[Brasuka]

With daylight saving time ending today I woke up and realized that it wasn't 10am it was 9am but there were different times all over so I didn't know which one it was. This put in my head that if people never knew what time it was or if we didn't have a track of time, the world would be in a crisis. Think about it, if you didn't know the right time and the person next door didn't know the right time and neither did the person across the street, wouldn't you go insane not knowing what to do because you don't have the exact time? Time is like the most important thing for everyone and we don't even know it.

[Mistydawn]

Brasuka, on 01 November 2009 - 10:50 AM, said:

With daylight saving time ending today I woke up and realized that it wasn't 10am it was 9am but there were different times all over so I didn't know which one it was. This put in my head that if people never knew what time it was or if we didn't have a track of time, the world would be in a crisis. Think about it, if you didn't know the right time and the person next door didn't know the right time and neither did the person across the street, wouldn't you go insane not knowing what to do because you don't have the exact time? Time is like the most important thing for everyone and we don't even know it.

Brasuka, couple of years back, actually maybe in was around 1995, I magically/weirdly suddenly, for no account known to me, became allergic to certain things. I couldn't wear leather or silver or any kind of metal next to my skin, without a nasty reaction. Since then, I haven't worn a watch.
Up to then, it was the first and last thing I saw to each and every day, always felt incomplete without it. D'you know what? Weirdly, given the the light in the sky, I can with just about tell the hour, with maybe a half hours difference!
I sometimes wake in the night, and test myself to see if I can tell the time... though some of this is based on the stillness of the hour, and basically, sounds... but I am often correct.

I think if you are tied to the Clock on the Mantle, in the Hall, or on your wrist, give it a go; throw them out the door, and you might just surprise yourself!!!

[tinieblas]

we managed fine for thousands of years without clocks and, like Misty I didn't wear a watch for a long period until I solved my allergy issue as well, time as we like to break it down by hours and minutes is a weird thing....at first you get panicky and think you're constantly missing something, then you get used to it and find yourself in a hurry a lot less than you used to be......you'll be surprised, we don't need time as we have it, it's a completely artificial construct and you'll be amazed how it is when you stop caring...

[jules99]

tinieblas, on 02 November 2009 - 03:03 PM, said:

we managed fine for thousands of years without clocks and, like Misty I didn't wear a watch for a long period until I solved my allergy issue as well, time as we like to break it down by hours and minutes is a weird thing....at first you get panicky and think you're constantly missing something, then you get used to it and find yourself in a hurry a lot less than you used to be......you'll be surprised, we don't need time as we have it, it's a completely artificial construct and you'll be amazed how it is when you stop caring...

Living by clock time only became important to us with the industrial revolution. Workers had to arrive to work at a set time. Prior to that it was just by the sun, or by how hungry you were, or by guess work on cloudy days.

[Brasuka]

Then the new question is what would people do if we didn't know the time when we woke up and there was no way of finding out the time.

[BurnSide]

Try to think a little outside the box Brasuka. It definitely will NOT do to be a slave to time your entire life! Time doesn't technically even exist at all, it's a human concept designed to explain the very human perception of moving forwards through our life.

Many cultures in the world exist quite wonderfully without even thinking about the time. I lived in a small town in Costa Rica for a while and there we lived on what is known as 'Tico time'. Living by a strict clock only causes stress and there stress is not a factor in anyone's life because they don't abide by clocks. You wake up when you wake up, for everyone it's usually around 6-7 o'clock. You take your time, make some food, clean yourself up, head out the door, take a nice leisurely stroll through the town, stop and talk to everyone you see on the way, get to your destination probably your work, get set up, work until it gets too hot to work anymore usually around 11, nap for a couple hours, work more until the work is done, do whatever you like for the evening until you get tired and go to bed. Sunset is always at 6 so bed is usually around 10.

What would happen if we didn't measure time in every aspect of our lives? Everyone would be much, much happier.

[GUNNARY SEARGENT HARTMAN]

How can we know if the time we percieve as the "right" time is actually the "right" time at all.....

Thanks, GUNNARYSEARGENTHARTMAN

[Fitter]

GUNNARYSEARGENTHARTMAN, on 15 November 2009 - 06:13 PM, said:

How can we know if the time we percieve as the "right" time is actually the "right" time at all.....

Thanks, GUNNARYSEARGENTHARTMAN

Isn't the "time" we all live by, work by and play by, just an arbitrarily specified naming held only by convention ?

If you could get everyone in the world to agree to change from, say 'one o'clock' to 'green cat' it would still work. We would have to change all the clock faces of course, but it would still work.

Even the time measurement 'the second' was originally a randomly chosen length of time that modern scientists had to search nature for to gain a repeatable standard measurement of...(The weights and Measures department has a lot to answer for...)

It used to be 1/86,400 of a mean solar day, but apparently is now :

"the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."

Not very poetic.... I think I prefer the green cat..

F

[BurnSide]

Well said Fitter.

[lightlyy]

Fitter said: in post #8 in reference to how long one second was...
"It used to be 1/86,400 of a mean solar day"

The above numbers make me want to ask... Does anyone happen to know the exact speed of light?

[Fitter]

lightlyy, on 16 November 2009 - 06:56 PM, said:

Fitter said: in post #8 in reference to how long one second was...
"It used to be 1/86,400 of a mean solar day"

The above numbers make me want to ask... Does anyone happen to know the exact speed of light?

I'm told that the speed of light actually does vary depending on the medium it's traveling through. In a vacuum it reaches its maximum speed of 186,282.396 miles per second, but has been brought down to 38 miles per hour when transmitted through sodium at -272C.

The research team at Harvard University brought light to a standstill using the bec rubidium in 2000. That kinda brings things into perspective...

F