It's About Time
Meeting 1
We will start our series of five meetings appropriately by discussing time, something most of us take for granted (though often with complaints and surprises at its apparent progression), but which has surprising physical, perceptual, philosophical and psychological properties. We will probe such diverse questions as: How has the measurement of time changed over the millennia? Do we all perceive the passage of time at the same rate? Why do we remember the past and not the future? How is time related to the question of free will? Is time absolute? Is time an emergent phenomenon? Does time pass at the same rate everywhere, to all observers? Is time travel possible? This class will be taught without heavy mathematics; rather, analogies and simple relations will be used when necessary to advance understanding.
As a warm up for some of the non-obvious properties of time, I recommend watching this 10 minute video which introduces the variation of time itself with relative speed and gravity.
A major takeaway from today’s class is Time’s Arrow – why does time go in only one direction. The answer is called Entropy, often referred to as a measure of disorder. Entropy explains why rooms tend to get messy more easily than they are tidied up, and why it is easier to break and egg than to reassemble one. I recommend viewing this short video that introduces the concept of entropy and why our universe moves forward in time.
