"Time Compression"?

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superberkut

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For one reason or the other, my clock in my room seems to speed up at night. This however appears to be a psychological issue, as if I remain awake for a longer period of time, my clock 'slows down' again, but so subtly that it escapes my notice. If I hum a song with a tempo of 4/4, with one bar ending every second, the seconds go slower as well. Does anybody have an explanation for this possible phenomenon?
 
I'm not sure I am following you. Are you talking about the idea that you "feel" the passing of time differently depending on what you do, or is this a specific effect with that very clock?
 
TopHat
Because time is relative? I dunno.
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thats quite a stab in the dark...:D

To clarify, Do you mean your clock is malfunctioning? or are you talking about a psycological effect which you don't understand?

If in fact you are reffering to time acctually slowing down, the question is how would you know? because you would also slow down as a result so everything would appear normal to you.
 
How long does it take for that last 10 minutes of that horrible class to go by? And at the end of a day doing something you absolutely love, why does it seem that it just went by so fast?

It's just a perception.

And by the way, 4/4 is not a tempo. :sly:
 
Lol, if anyone should know about time compression, it would have to be Spock!
 
Simple answer: your clock runs on a 4/3 time signature.
 
Time does actually speed up at night - it's true ;)

(I work a lot of night shifts, they seem to pass a lot more quickly than the day shifts.)
 
Your clock needs new batteries. The second hand is laboring to move upward. As for nighttime...you're imagining it.
 
Well, in music I suddenly found out. That 4/4 was not a tempo, that is. It's a time signature (I hope).

By psychological, I mean that I am sure that it is not the clock that speeds up, but it is something I perceive. Good grief, with all these questions I recently asked here, I may be going insane!

And no, I don't play Final Fantasy. It looks enticing, though.

Let me describe it: I lie awake, and the clock seems to be going fast, with seconds going as 1,2,3,4,5, as opposed to 1...2...3...4...5..., the latter being normal speed. I go to the bathroom (or anywhere else I may go), and as I return to my room, the clock paces again at 'normal speed'. My little brother's breathing above me is normal to my ears, and the clock doubles the velocity it would normally be ticking at when I experience, 'time compression'. As I can snap out of it on demand, I think this enigma is psychological.
 
I am not a scientist, nor do I hold any background in timey-scienciey things.

But I myself have noticed that at night time does appear (Emphasized! Note that!) to past a lot faster than it would during daylight hours. Whereas at during the day the time from roughly 9am (to me anyways) till around 8pm time can drag on and on. To me it would appear that since your mind is fully functioning you would still perceive time as a 1:1 ration, one second is one second and so forth. But at night the mind would (naturally, in a nature-ish way) slow down, causing your perception to slow down also, but not enough like when your piss drunk after challenging your mates to see how much ever clear shots you could do and still stand. In that subtle slowdown in your head the inverse would happen to everything around you, things (like oh lets say time) speed up.
amirite, amirite?
I myself do notice this as It also allows me to concentrate fully on a singular task since I don't think spending 4 hours from 10pm-2am, is much time to spend working on one photo in photoshop. Whereas in the day spending 10 minutes on something in photoshop leaves me border than wood. Once again its the whole your mental perception is slowed and time around speeds up, while in reality time is still working at the 1:1 ration verses your own 1:1.2 ration or so.

Word.
 
Get a stopwatch and check it for sure. I'm betting that your clock runs like...well, clockwork. It's unlikely that it runs differently during the day than at night. It's more likely that your internal clock is messed up. If you get all jacked up on Red Bull, you'll count off seconds faster than if you just awoke from a coma.
 
I have a friend who is a chronic insomniac - I'm pretty sure he'd beg to differ about the whole 'time passes faster at night' idea. :crazy:
 
Is it possible that you're somehow relating the clock's rate to your heartbeat? If you're still and focused (and esp. lying down), your pulse rate will be slow, making the seconds pass faster, relatively speaking. Get up and walk to a bathroom, be active in there for a few minutes and come back, your pulse rate will have increased, so the seconds will pass less frequently compared to heartbeats?

I mention this because a music tutor I once had believed that musicians have difficulty playing to a tempo that is slower than their pulse rate because the heartbeat was in some way related to one's ability to keep rhythm. Or something like that. Dunno if it's true or not but I do know that if I concentrate for a second or so, I can feel my hearbeats, which means I can feel them all the time but subconsciously ignore them, so it's possible that subconsciously your pulse rate is affecting your perception of the clock, perhaps.
 
Time can slow down but its a psychological thing, like in a stressful or scary situation your vision and mind can go into bullet time mode dude to the release of loads of chemicals...

You clock speeds up at night because your body is at its calmest or if your staying up, most tired. The lack of alertness makes the time fly past...

I wish time would slow down loads today...Its going stupidly fast, got a major deadline for tomorrow!

Robin
 
Kylehnat
Get a stopwatch and check it for sure. I'm betting that your clock runs like...well, clockwork. It's unlikely that it runs differently during the day than at night. It's more likely that your internal clock is messed up. If you get all jacked up on Red Bull, you'll count off seconds faster than if you just awoke from a coma.
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At 4:30a.m. today, I tried this. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the seconds fly past when I stared at the stopwatch! Interestingly, my clock is actually behind, but I don't dare reset it.

So, yes, it is psychological, but it's still very alarming.

Tsukuba Trueno, you find something funny?
 
lolwut9f5ce4evh7.jpg
 
howcome my download bitrates slowz down when i stare at them?? should I stop staring at them?? they seem to go faster when I'm not looking.
 

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