The Paradox of Time

Time is a strange thing.  It flows constantly forward and you can't stop it.  It's a juggernaut.  A beast.  A tank.  It doesn't listen to anybody or anything.

Time is really annoying because whenever you want it to speed up, like when you're sitting in a bored class, time slows down to a crawl.  Every time you check the clock, you feel 10 minutes have gone by, when only 30 seconds have gone by in reality.  Or, if there's a huge event like an awesome party or sweet vacation the next day, you'll have trouble waiting for the time to pass.

However, if you are hard-pressed for time, you want time to slow down for you.  But then, time starts accelerating to breakneck speeds.  When you're taking an atrociously difficult test under extreme time constraints, time starts flying by.  As you try and try to solve the problems, an hour goes by and time is called and you have to stop working.  Or, if you're playing some awesome, intense video games, but you look up and already an hour has gone by.

Thus, I have discovered the time function: v(n) = k/n, where v is the how fast time is passing, n is how much you need the time, and k is some constant.

I think it's rather true.  When you're cramming stuff right before, you wish you had just a few extra minutes, when you had an hour yesterday that you blew off because time was very unimportant at the time.

Actually, I think it has to do with how active your brain is.  Your brain uses all of it's processing power to do stuff, and the unused power goes to "processing" time.  So when you're very idle, your brain spends tons of resources doing nothing but thinking about time passing.  That makes time really slow because you're always thinking about it.  Then, when you're fully occupied, there is little to no brainpower going to processing time.  So it will fly by because you're not thinking about it.  Maybe during everyday mundane tasks, a second feels like a second, and that's the standard second that you feel.  This brain idea even takes into account when you're tired or your brain is at suboptimal performance.  If you're really sleepy, you don't have any processing power to do anything, so no matter what you're doing, time is flying by because you can't even think about time whether or not you wanted to.

Hence, I have discovered the brain-time function: v(b) = kb/B, where v is how fast you think time is going by, k is some other constant, b is how fast your brain is going, and B is your maximum brain speed at the moment.

So that's the paradox of time.  Time is so rebellious and unsympathetic.  It "deliberately" goes faster when you want it to slow down.  Time antagonizes you for fun.  It purposely goes slower when you want it to go faster. Anyway, none of what I just said has any scientific basis (as far as I know), so it's all just for fun!  Hooray!

25-Hour Day

What would happen if the day had 25 hours?  Numerically, 25 is a perfect square, and in the decimal system, we really like multiples of 5.  However, 24 also has it's merits: it's divisible by many more numbers than 25 is.

I'm not talking about magically increasing the length of the day into 25 hours.  I was thinking of decreasing the length of the hour from 60.0 minutes to 57.6 minutes.  Then, we could change the minute so that there are still 60 minutes in an hour, thus reducing the minute's length to 57.6 seconds.  After that, we can readjust the second, which is a metric unit.  Or, we could change it so that there are 50 minutes in an hour, another move towards the decimal system since 50 is much more "decimal" than 60.  Maybe we should just leave it as 57.6 minutes in an hour and not readjust all of the other time units because science would be in an uproar if an SI unit got changed.  Everything would still be the same dimensionally, but it would all be off numerically.

What would people do with that false "extra" hour?  Maybe they feel like that they have more time, even though they don't.  Some might sleep in; others might play video games; even others might some find something useful to do.

Would people notice that each hour is shorter?  Every hour is shortened by 4% to make time for the extra hour. That's 2.4 minutes chopped off of each normal hour.  I think that most people will notice at the beginning, but then they will begin to adjust to the new time.

Would the illusory "extra" hour actually work?  There are a few inherent problems with this system.  The first is the most obvious.  What if only some people adopt the new system?  Then it would start another one of those metric-vs.-customary battles.  Also, 57.6 minutes in each hour seems kind of odd, and as I mentioned earlier, changing the physical quantity of a second may not be a good idea.

Even if everybody took the new system, it would make everybody's hours seem more rushed since they are actually shorter, making the everybody, who are already going at break-neck speed, even faster (and maybe more efficient).  Short activities, such as half-hour exercises or one-hour classes would only be shortened by 1.2 and 2.4 minutes, respectively.  That's next to unnoticeable, when you consider all the small things that can cause such a fluctuation.  However, when you consider things that take up a significant chunk of time, such as sleeping, school, or work, which all take around 8 hours each, they will all lose 19.2 minutes, which seems small compared to the 8 hours, but it's like getting out of school or work 20 minutes earlier each day.    Also, it would make the recommended 8 hour nighttime rest be only 7 hours + 40 minutes.  Maybe people would learn to adjust to that, but it might not actually be healthy.

Are there any real benefits?  Considering that 20 of the extra minutes in the day come from losing sleep, it means that if you still want your 8-hour beauty-sleep, then you would only get 40 minutes.  It's still a significant amount of time for you to kick back and relax or do something you've always wanted to do.

All considered, the only thing that the new 25-hour day would accomplish is make everything go faster, and likely make everyone more stressed out (unless everybody uses the extra hour for relaxation).  They'd all learn to be 4.167% more efficient to make their work-time efforts still the same as the normal 8-hour workday.  Maybe it's a good idea; maybe it's not.  What do you think?