∆ Time, A Travellers Guide. C.A.Pickover.

What do clocks measure ?

For me the problem here is that I think Galileo and Newton only really explored motion, and the mathematics of comparing motion. That is neither of them seem to have proved the existence of the future, or the past, or the flow of time.

If Einstein says "time is simply what a clock reads" then I would agree, although i would say the word 'clock' is loaded and misleading.

I think the devices we call clocks don't read anything, they just display examples of constant motion - these examples are very useful because the earth we are on is constantly spinning, and hence the sun is always moving through the sky.

given that it is easy to see where you are going where the sun is overhead, and harder when its light is blocked by the Earth, it is useful t know where the sun is even if you can't see it directly.

Below is one of my favourite 'mechanical examples of regular motion'...

A '24 hour watch'.

This watch is useful and simple because the stocky red hand rotates at the same rate the Earth itself spins.

If you were on the North Pole of the Earth, and positioned the watch so that this '24 hour' hand was pointing at the sun, it would constantly keep pointing at the Sun as the hand's rotation around the dial matched the same speed as the Earth's rotation on it's axis. And in this way follow the sun's position around the horizon.

You could say the small red hand keeps track of 'time passing' as well as the Earth keeps track it'self. Or you could say 'they both are rotating at the same rate'. The first view require that you prove the past and future, and the one way flow of time in a fourth dimension exist, the second, just that you accept what you always, directly, and constantly observe 'now'.

So just what do clocks measure ? see >>> What do clocks measure?

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