what is time?
... Water clocks were possibly the first clock that did not depend on the sun, moon, planets, or stars. The first recorded mechanical clocks appeared in the early 14th century in Italian cities. A Dutch scientist, Christiaan Huijgens, is credited with being the first to advance the accuracy of mechanical clocks so that the error was less than one minute a day (with the pendulum clock concept). There are various time zones in the world. They are separated based on the longitude of its location. There are 24 times zones, each fifteen degrees wide. This is based on an equal distribution of the 24 times zones, being that there is a 360 degree longitude around the earth and 24 hours in a day. This method of keeping time was made final by an act in Congress in March of 1918. The evolutionary process of the measurement of time is significant, but the posed question, what is time, remains. There are 365 days in a years, 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute. People are not always aware of the fact that time has such a huge impact on their lives. Time is such a controlling and demanding factor. Imagine the possibilities if one could freeze time. One could perhaps accomplish many things without the rest of the world continuing, without the clock ticking. Time does, in fact, fly and passes by ever so quickly. Time is also often spent doing things that may seem a waste of life or actions that not worthwhile. For instances, the average human spends 5 years of their life sleeping. This may seem wasteful for it seems that one could spend such a huge amount of time in a way that is more useful that sleeping. Sleep, generally, is usually vital for one’s mental and physical health, as it helps an individual to recover and regroup. The different measurements of time can be taken into context in numerous ways. When I swim a race, for example, a second is a long time. The difference between a gold medal and a silver medal in the Olympic Games has, in the past, been one millisecond. One or two seconds can seem like an eternity when I am losing to a competitor and desperately trying to catch up. Yet, 86,400 of these same seconds pass me by every day. The time of an entire day can seem to be a waste in some circumstances. An entire day is 86, 400 seconds, that is 86,400 feeling of angst of being so close, yet so far. Youth is perhaps the most prized or sought after quality, especially by the elderly. Someone once said to me, “Do you realize that youth is what everyone seems to be searching for, and you have it. Youth is so precious, and I seem to find my youth slowly slipping away from me.” There are an uncountable amount of things that are employed by people in hope of trying to recapture this truth. For example, plastic surgery and the desire (of older people) to have all the “hip” clothing are really desperate attempts to erase the passage of time. As Peter Strup once said, “time only seems to matter when it’s runnin...