Grandview Heights High School and the Reality of Time

ABOUT the VIDEO About the PHYSICS BEHIND THE SCENES - BEXLEY Physics In Trouble HOW DID THEY DO IT? The Worm in the Wormhole Time Machine Bexley Photo Gallery 2008 Innovation Award Nominees Local Business Support The_Problem Marshall Barnes Brings The Reality Of Fringe to Life National Lab Day IS A REAL MASSIVE DYNAMIC POSSIBLE? Tech Companies Support National Lab Day #1 NLDScientist Bettering Our Schools? NLDHubble NLD Grandview Heights NLD Light Refraction Grandview Heights High School and the Reality of Time Data Analysis at Summit Academy The Nature of Time Experiment USASEF Gallery ADVANCED CONCEPT ADVENTURES NLD at AAAS The "Fringe" Of Science IS ANY OF THIS REALLY "REAL"? A BRIEF HISTORY OF FRINGE SCIENCE ON THE REAL FRINGE Marshall Barnes, R&D Eng = The Best In STEM The Oppenheimer Strain WHAT'S TO COME IN THE REAL FRINGE Where It All Began Marshall Barnes at the USASEF Business STEM Support Critical Thinking At Bexley Press Press Room 2 Press Room 3 D.C. TIme Party Mars Society Conference Education Visionary Grandview Heights and the Oppenheimer Strain Photo THE UNIVERSE AS "IT'S OWN MOTHER" Mars Society Conference In Grapevine, TX Time Runs Backwards Marcon 2012 OSU Wexner Center Math and Science Club Beats Hawking! Time Machine Prototype At Grandview Heights High School STEPHEN HAWKING'S FEEDBACK MISTAKE 14th Annual Mars Conference Road Trip SPonsored by GreyHound

What Is Time?

The combined classes of teachers Jo Lee and Greg Wieland at Grandview Heights High School, in Grandview Heights, OH, did two sessions with Marshall Barnes on the nature of time. The first session dealt with the question of time being real or not, an issue that came out later that month in the next issue of Scientific American. The students, like the ones at Bexley and the Summit Academy in Toledo, also participated in testing the David Eagleman theory on duration dilation and they also determined that Eagelman's experiment was flawed to the point of being inconsequential. It was a surprsing and sobering experience for these young science students, but a lesson well learned. 

Time. What Is It?

Marshall began by asking the students whether they thought time was real or just a creation of Man to measure change by. Some of the students thought that perhaps that was the case. Marshall mentioned that in fact there are a number of scientists who are arguing for a nonexistence for time, an idea that we live in a timeless universe. Marshall said that he would prove later that this was wrong and that in fact there is a time dimension that is connected to space just as Einstein and Minkowski said. First, however, he wanted to the students to understand the difference between real time and our perceptions of time.

Time as we perceive it is subjecvtive. It is psychological. When we are busy having fun, it seems to go by fast. When we are bored or doing some task that we rather not, time seems to drag on and on. However, Marshall explained that that is just our perceptions, and the way to prove it is to take two sets of people, one busy with a game that they enjoy and the other busy doing something boring and tedious. You put a camera hooked up to a video recorder on both groups of people and record their activities. Afterward, you ask them how much time has gone by and the one group will overestimate while the other will underestimate, but you will be able tp see that the exact length of time transpired for both.

Marshall pointed out that our perceptions of time are separate from time itself. For example, duration dilation, the perception of time slowing down during an intense activity, is not the same as time dilation, which is the slowing down of time in a strong gravity field or due to traveling at a high velocity. Time seen from a psychological or even physiological level is not the same as time from a physics point of view. That being said, time then cannot be simply a thing that Man invented. After all, as Marshall pointed out, the universe existed before Man did and it took time for all of the things will see in the universe to come into being as we see them.

So time exists for us biologically, psychologically and physically. It's easy to see how the first two apply, we age, we sense that time flies or drags but how do we know for sure that there is such a thing as the physics of time? That's what Marshall wants to prove and he decided to use the Grandview Heights classes to help him do it. 

As a professional research and development engineer, Marshall is concerned with what is real and what will work. Those are the only two things that matter. He can't design or build something without knowing that the premise that it will be based on is factual. Because his focus is in what is called the advanced concept area, meaning the area that deals with cutting edge and revolutionary breakthroughs, he often has to do the foundational research first because no one else has done it yet.

His main area of fundamental research is the nature of time and proving exactly what time is and how it works. To see how he was able to integrate the Grandview Heights class into his research, go the the next page by clicking the photo below.