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Although time is present in anything we do or take part in, we hardly think of time, or take notice of it, unless we are bored, or late.
We tend to think of time in association with clocks/watches, as these gadgets help establish our most direct contact with time. The experience of time, however, often has little to do with watches, chronometers, and the like.
Take motor racing, for example, which evokes a close association with chronometers, minute time units, and a constant concern with time and with beating time, so to speak. When the motors roar in Australia 2003 and the first qualifying session gets underway, although the drivers will now be going out for their flying laps each at a time, they will still be racing against one implacable challenger: the chronometer.
This is one temporal aspect of racing, and the aspect that is largely responsible for much of the excitement derived at racing events. It is additionally the facet of time that we are most commonly aware of, when we think of motor racing.
The other aspect of time present in motor racing, in turn, is capable of defeating any chronometry, however advanced.
Don't you recall having heard Michael or Ralf Schumacher, or Rubens Barrichello comment, at the end of a race that they won, that the last lap was the longest lap that they had ever driven? Were they going slowly? No, it was time that was passing differently for them during that last lap. In other words, their experience of time, during that final lap, was different from their experience of time during the remaining of the race.
Have you ever wondered what kind of eternity it must feel like from within the cockpit, when a driver, all strapped up to his seat at the start grid, has nothing else to do but watch and wait and wait for the five red lights to come on, and finally the green go? To us, spectators, this same time-interval is conversely a brief anticipation of all the excitement that we are about to enjoy, when all cars roar away from their grid positions.
Albert Einstein is attributed a brief anecdote that humorously explains our experience of time, and illustrates further contrasts such as the one just mentioned:
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When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute--and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
For other interesting quotes on time, please see MieNet's Quotes on Time. For a menu of all quotes available at MieNet (all of which you are welcome to copy/use) please click here. Time having been one of my main concerns in scientific research for over 15 years now, MieNet's Time Pages carry a few curious facets of time and human time, as well as some fun stuff. You are welcome to check them out.
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Back to the racing scene, take on the other hand a practice session during which a driver may be struggling to find the right set-up for his coming qualifying session. When his challenging practice session is over, that driver will often feel as if his session had somehow been cut short, or he had hardly gotten it underway when time ran up. Yet, the clock had been ticking just the same for everyone on the paddock.
Pit stops constitute another instance in which the experience of time, that is, beyond that which chronometry can assess, may be quite diverse. For the driver, who is sitting helplessly inert in the cockpit and anxious to storm away back into the action, those usual 5-12 seconds translate themselves into another bit of eternity. To a certain extent, it is as if all that frenzied activity of mechanics around him were unfolding in slow-motion. For the mechanics, however, ever committed in a fierce struggle to beat the chronometer and totally immersed in their duties, those 5-12 seconds slip away in a wink.
How about when things go wrong on the pit lane, and a pit stop drags on to 17 or more seconds? What do you experience, as a spectator? How about the driver? the mechanics? the Team managers? You can add a bit of fun to your racing experience by viewing it from a number of different viewpoints (or frames of reference, as Einstein would put it).
As you can see, in addition to the excitement that has made us all fond of car-racing, the time aspect of motor competitions (and other fast sports such as skiing) can lend an extra dose of thrill to our experience, as spectators.
More on time and timing, in coming upgrades of this eBook
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