Sounds a easy question, doesn't it? In fact, I can hear your inner voices crying out 24 hours and I can hear some studious minds shout out 23 hours and 56 minutes. And congratulations to all those minds. They can pass the fifth grade(No offense here). However, let us be more practical, and get out of our books and find why a day has more than 24 hours.
Time is an interesting concept in our day to day lives. Maybe, that is why, Length of a life is measured in terms of time. And ever since his evolution, Men has fantasized about time travel. But still, it eludes men or has it been conquered?
The construction was poor looking and would have never made close to or nominated for a World wonder. The stature was small, and did never think of appearing in the Nat Geo's Mega structures. It only had a pedal drive, two wooden wheels, wings, tails and fins, all made out of torn cloth and a rudder made of chopped wood. It was not a complex machinery at all. It even did not have a motor. And to add to these, it was just a dream of two high school graduates. And thanks to that dream, men broke 24 hour day and made time travel.
The two brothers were looking towards the sky when they saw a bird glide gracefully over their heads. That glide kindled their desire to fly. That glide made them challenge mother nature who decided not to give flight to men. That glide conquered space. The desire grew into a dream and that gave birth to an invention, an invention that broke the 24 hour barrier for a day. It broke the concept of a day.
We learnt in lower class geography that, a day is the time taken by our Earth to rotate about itself completely. And then, we have our own definition for a day, the days of a week. The seven day week was an invention of men. A week starts with the Sunday and ends with the Saturday. And a day is said to be 24 hours. Oh really?? Not after what the Wright brothers have invented.
So how long is a day? Or how long it can be? The western tip of the World, lags the eastern end by 24 hours, at least approximately. On a particular Wednesday, our man X took a 24 hour flight from the eastern end, at 6 A.M., to the western end. When he landed at his destination, 24 hours later, X found himself standing in the western end on a Wednesday, 6.A.M, exactly the same time even 24 hours later. So for him this particular Wednesday was 48 hours. And that is the maximum it can be.
Thanks to two brothers, you can have 48 hours in day just by travelling west. Decide what day you want it to be.
But there is another cheaper option, a funny and a clever one. Find yourself standing in the eastern end of the planet at 12 midnight and when the gong goes, take a step further east. Technically, you are back to the start of the day.
Choose the way you want to travel time. :)
1 comments:
good post involving a lot of derivative explanation... but i guess u have messed up the last line of this good post done by u.. technically speaking, the person standing at a place at 12am has to move WEST and not East as mentioned by u to go back to the same day's beginning... also, it would not be one minute, but six minutes as the difference in time between each longitude is 6 minutes.. cheers lad...
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