TIME

Time and space are the two main features to describe our existence. Every second of our lives we are located somewhere. We can’t describe our activities separately from time and space. After the question ‘When’ comes straight away the question ‘Where’. Time remains one of the most mysterious aspects of the world in which we live. Time connects our existence in a process with the past, present and the future. Many philosophers and scientists are still trying to define the concept of time. It is so characteristic for our lives that we cannot imagine our everyday existence without it being measured with time, like just one continuous process. The human brain is designed in a way that it feels more comfortable and secure if everything is structured and in order. Without time there would be a great chaos. We need time to plan our lives and to make them more organised. Time management is important for our daily lives. We tend to think that we can manage time. Time goes only forwards, not backwards. In many fictional stories the plot includes the invention of a time machine. The time machine enables people to relive past periods of time and change the events of the future ones, eventually. The time machine gives people the illusion that we can control time. This is quite a great illusion because the time we measure and the way we control it is not the same time that is in the vast space. Any definition of ours will not be able to describe in depth what the nature of time is. But scientists believe memory formation is the basis for human perception of time.

The beginnings of civilisation on Earth required knowledge of the seasons, and the mysteries surrounding the length of the year, the length of the day and the length of the month began to be studied. All the world religions gave time a central role, be it in astrology, stories of creation, cyclical world histories, notions of eternity, etc. A huge effort has been put into making devices to measure time with ever increasing accuracy from the beginnings of recorded history to the present day. Historically people invented a few ways temporal measurements, or chronometry. This took two different forms: a calendar (a mathematical tool for organising intervals of time) and the clock (a physical mechanism that counts the passage of time).

In day-to-day life, the clock is designed for periods less than a day whereas the calendar is designed for periods longer than a day. Phones display both calendars and clocks at the same time.

Time is passing non-stop, and we follow it with clocks and calendars. We cannot say what exactly happens when time passes.

Time is represented through change, such as the circular motion of the moon around Earth. The passing of time is indeed closely connected to the concept of space.

As far as the universe is concerned, time had a beginning. According to the general theory of relativity, space, or the universe, the starting point was in the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. Before that, all matter was packed into an extremely tiny dot. That dot also contained the matter that later came to be the sun, the earth and the moon - the heavenly bodies that tell us about the passing of time.

Before the Big Bang, there was no space or time. It is hard for humans to understand how time works. Past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are things that cannot go backwards, like when you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can’t turn an omelet into an egg. We are born young and we get older but it doesn’t happen backwards. The arrow of time is set to go only ahead. It is something we can measure but we cannot feel. Science, philosophy, religion, and the arts have different definitions of time but the system of measuring it is relatively consistent.

Clocks are based on seconds, minutes, and hours. But what, exactly, is time? Physicists define time as the progression of events from the past to the present into the future. Basically, if a system is unchanging, it is timeless. Time can be considered to be the fourth dimension of reality, used to describe events in three-dimensional space. It is not something we can see, touch, or taste, but we can measure its passage.

In other words, the universe cannot return to exactly the same state in which it was at an earlier point. Time cannot move backwards. In classical mechanics, time is the same everywhere. Synchronized clocks remain in agreement. Physicists say that time is an illusion: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Our reality is just a complex network of events onto which we project sequences of past, present and future. Time plays a very significant role in the universe’s organization. Some philosophers argue that only present objects and present experiences are real.

There is something that we call ‘biological time’. It is defined by the regular biological processes inside us, and by signs of our aging. There are regular heart beats, regular breathing, regular cycles of sleeping and waking.

Time has played a central role in mathematics from its very beginnings and is a topic which is studied in mathematics from different aspects. Mathematics almost certainly began through the study of time, particularly the need to record sequences of events. An understanding of the seasons is vital for the successful growing of crops. The natural timekeepers in the sky are the daily passage of the sun and the monthly phases of the moon. The fact that knowing the length of a year was vitally important, yet much less visible from the timekeepers in the sky, led to calculation. It was also necessary to count days and months and this gave rise to calendars. The earliest evidence of timekeeping goes back around 20000 years; evidence from markings made on sticks and bones in Europe around this time are thought to be records of days between successive new moons. Many ancient calendars were created but as an example let us look briefly at an Egyptian one from around 4500 BC. Dividing the year into months was natural, yet complicated since there were not an integral number of months in a year. Similarly dividing the month into days was complicated for the same reason. A day was a long period of time and there was clearly a need for dividing the day, but it was less obvious how this might be done. In around 3000 BC the Sumerians divided the day into 12 periods, and divided each of these periods into 30 parts. The Babylonian civilisation, which grew up around 1000 years later, in the same area of present day Iraq as that of the earlier Sumerians, divided the day into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes, each minute into 60 seconds. It is their division of the day which gives us the widely used modern units of time. 

In mathematics the time is considered to be the ongoing sequence of events taking place. The basic unit of time is the second. There are also minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. We can measure time using clocks. Normally time is shown as Hours:Minutes. There are 24 Hours in a Day and 60 Minutes in each Hour. There is a 24 hour clock and 12 hour clock. We learn how to tell the time, and how to add and subtract time, which means how to add or subtract the hours and minutes separately. Time Maths explores the concept of telling time and converting time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. Finding time Maths solutions can mean adding and subtracting to find the amount of time passed or can mean multiplying or dividing to convert units of time. Converting between units of time requires understanding how many units per larger unit of time. We use the knowledge that there are 365 days per year, which equals 52 weeks in each year. Focus on the fact that there are seven days in each week and that each day consists of 24 hours. Break down each hour to 60 minutes per hour and 60 seconds per minute.

Mathematics studies time together with other compound measures. A compound measurement is a measurement that uses more than one quantity. Speed is measured using the formula distance ÷ time. So if we need to find the speed or the distance, we need the measurement of the time. Calculations involving distance, speed and time can be worked out using formulae.

Here are some activities for you:

Activity 1: If you have a time machine in which historical period would you like to go? And if you have the power to change some historical events which ones you would change and why?

Activity 2: Can you name a few different calendars to measure the year?

Activity 3: Can you make a list with 10 sayings and proverbs or idioms with the word ‘time’ inside? Can you try to translate them into English? Did you notice any changes in the meaning?

In our life we all travel in time. We travel one year in time between our birthdays, for example. When we experience some happy moments it seems to us that time is passing so quickly. When we have dark times, it looks like there is no end to them. Time is the sort of thing that is never enough. You cannot buy it in the shop, you cannot borrow it. The whole life depends on the time. Sometimes one happy moment can last forever. And we never forget the hard times as well, they are like lessons, sometimes painful and unforgettable. We need to treasure every day as something that will never repeat itself. Every day is a reminder how short our time on the planet Earth is and how much we need to appreciate it. We need to use our precious time here to spread the good. We have a habit of always looking at what is waiting for us in the future. We often split ourselves and physically we are in here but spiritually are in the future. As a result we are nowhere. Maybe we need to develop the habit to live more in the moment so we are more useful and we can put all our energy and effort to make our life better now. Because now is the future. We spoke about the physical and biological time but there is something which is called ‘psychological’ time. It is a private and subjective time. It is like in the big Universe there are billions other mini universes created by us, people. According to this time we consider the rules of the heart. The time in our heart goes in a different space from the time outside. Our heart likes daydreaming very much, which is very often possible through time traveling. Some people say that time is not measured by clocks but by moments. We need to enjoy every moment because they will not repeat. And an inch of time is an inch of gold but we cannot buy that inch of time with an inch of gold, as people say. Very often when we don’t have answers to some important happenings in our life we leave everything so the time could resolve it. Does time really heal? Or do we just get used to the pain sometimes? It is different for everybody.

In our everyday life we should show more care about our own time management. How we spent our day, are we doing something meaningful for ourselves and for others? Are we the event makers of our life or are we waiting the time to do something for us? There is no time enough to be wasted. With better time management we should use our days to do creative things which could help to change the world to be a better place full of beauty and peace. There shouldn’t be any time wasted because it is so precious.

Will time ever end? Will there be another Big Bang but backwards? The answer to this question is unknown. Only time will tell.

(E. S. Lyubenova; LoveMaths Story for my students)