Diminishing Time Theory
I know that today is going to be 24 hours in duration, just like yesterday, just like the day I turned 12. Still, I feel that my days are becoming increasingly short. While I don’t yet know what the number will be, I know my days are numbered - and I don’t want them to go by faster. As a starting point to address the issue, I have developed a mathematical description of it.
Using the following definitions,
OD = One Day
DESB = Days Elapsed Since Birth
N = Number of Days
I can show Today, in the context of my life, as
Today = OD / (DESB)
By this logic,
Yesterday = OD / (DESB-OD)
Assuming that OD is always a positive number, I present my Diminishing Time Theory (DTT):
OD / (DESB) < OD / (DESB-(N * OD))
Therefore, Today actually IS shorter than Yesterday, on a relative basis. For me, today will be 0.009316% shorter than yesterday, and 0.591913% shorter than my 12th birthday.
Illustrating it graphically, it's apparent that we are doomed even in our first year of existence to progressively shorter days. Unfortunately, this brings me no closer to a solution.
Theoretically, I see that I can neutralize, or even reverse, the tendancy of relative time diminishment by making the denominator smaller, but this is not practical as I don’t have a flux capacitor.
The alternative, increasing the numerator, presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Einstein theorized that it would be possible to cause time to pass at a different rate due to gravitational time dilation. Unfortunately, I don’t have an antigravity generator or a space shuttle. I also don’t have an ability to change the rate of the earth’s rotation about its axis in order to increase the number of hours in the day. But, I do have Daylight Savings Time and, once a year, there is an exception to the DTT. This year, on November 4, when I set my clock back one hour, I’m going to party like it’s August 30, 2006.
Using the following definitions,
OD = One Day
DESB = Days Elapsed Since Birth
N = Number of Days
I can show Today, in the context of my life, as
Today = OD / (DESB)
By this logic,
Yesterday = OD / (DESB-OD)
Assuming that OD is always a positive number, I present my Diminishing Time Theory (DTT):
OD / (DESB) < OD / (DESB-(N * OD))
Therefore, Today actually IS shorter than Yesterday, on a relative basis. For me, today will be 0.009316% shorter than yesterday, and 0.591913% shorter than my 12th birthday.
Illustrating it graphically, it's apparent that we are doomed even in our first year of existence to progressively shorter days. Unfortunately, this brings me no closer to a solution.Theoretically, I see that I can neutralize, or even reverse, the tendancy of relative time diminishment by making the denominator smaller, but this is not practical as I don’t have a flux capacitor.
The alternative, increasing the numerator, presents a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Einstein theorized that it would be possible to cause time to pass at a different rate due to gravitational time dilation. Unfortunately, I don’t have an antigravity generator or a space shuttle. I also don’t have an ability to change the rate of the earth’s rotation about its axis in order to increase the number of hours in the day. But, I do have Daylight Savings Time and, once a year, there is an exception to the DTT. This year, on November 4, when I set my clock back one hour, I’m going to party like it’s August 30, 2006.
posted by tori at
2:31 PM
3 Comments:
Wow, nice graph Tori. Busy day at work?
As a matter of fact, I'm at an excel course that, surprisingly, I've decided isn't very interesting.
I developed the DTT yesterday when, after 9 hours in flight, we were grounded on the runway at the Calgary airport for an hour due to a lightning warning. The theory was a bit more elaborate than what ended up on the blog. As a matter of fact, I identified another loophole - transatlantic travel over short timeframes. I experienced the sensation of time dilation while traveling to the UK and back between Monday and Wednesday in the course of 48 hours. Despite my best attempts, I was unable to come up with a mathematical explanation for that.
This must be what math-y people do when me and my friends make random music for hours. Wow. If only we could combine the skills, somehow....
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