BBC Focus Magazine

[erykpilat]

What exactly is time, spacetime, two dimension and three dimension, special relativity,general relativity,the theory of everything??????




Thank you
Eryk

[Esther]

They are some awfully big questions! Why don't you choose just one or two of them, tell us what you know so far, and we'll work from there...

We could start with two and three dimensions if you like. What do you know about them so far?

[M Paul Lloyd]

Time is relative to individual velocity and location but is essentially a man made concept to measure the rate of change.

Spacetime is the relative condition of actual space and its rate of change.

Two dimensions are defined by a flat plane which you can move across like the page of a book

Three dimensions adds an additional direction (effectively up down) to the above

Special relativity, general relativity and the theory of everything needs, as Esther suggests, a bit more complicated. I'll get back to you on that if I may.

[The Beige Avenger]

Didn't you say you were 10?

Spacetime is 4-dimensional space, it has the 3-dimensions of what we class as regular space but there is also this quantity called time that seems to tick at different speeds depending on where you are e.g. close to a star.

The last 3 things you asked about are all theories to describe and predict observations.

Relativity is how one thing looks / behaves when looked at from somewhere.... like if you're in a car sitting beside someone, they, relative to you aren't moving... but relative to someone else are moving... this is a classical field of physics (special relativity).
General relativity (general theory of relativity) is a special version of this and deals with things like how time changes when things go fast, really really fast. It is a theory for describing not only the very fast, but the very large... like predicting what happens on astronomical scales when the classical views (Newton) don't really work (the famous example being the orbit of Mercury around the Sun).

The problem is, well, there are theories to describe the very small (Quantum), theories to describe the normal (classical) and theories to describe the very large (relativistic).... but, the boffins have sought a theory to describe everything from a fundamental recipe.... this is a theory of everything or a grand unified theory.

For a 10 year old these questions are like wondering what the protagonist's motivations are in Chaucer when you're still learning how to spell!

I recommend a good, solid grounding in Newtonian mechanics before trying to suss out time, which philosophers would argue doesn't even exist!

[Shadowwolf]

...which philosophers would argue doesn't even exist!

Did someone mention philosophers? This helpful resource explains all about em

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy

[M Paul Lloyd]

Ooooh unwikia, how refreshing.

[erykpilat]

Thank you Beige Avenger and M Paul Lloyd for great explanations, but I know I'm a bit too young for this kind of stuff... I just like science. Discovery programmes, The Focus magazine , The Internet sometimes don't explain too clearly for a 10 year old. I just am curious of the world......TO curious!
P.S I still have lots of questions!!!

[Esther]

Eryk - see if you can find copies of the Uncle Albert books by Russell Stannard. The first one is about Time and Space, the second one is about Black Holes and the third is the Quantum Quest, about quantum mechanics. They deal with some pretty advanced topics in a very easy to understand way, set as a story about a young girl (Gedankan - which apparenlty means 'thought experiment') and her Unlce Albert, who is obviously based on Albert Einstein. They are written for young teens and I think you'll enjoy them. Try your school library, or town library, or put them on your birthday wish list.

[erykpilat]

Thank you Esther , I bet I really will like those books... I'll see if there is any of those books on E-bay .

[Gabriel]

Hi eryk
I don't know what time is it for a physicist, but I can say what time it is for a living being, for a biologist.
I'm gonna quote one of my favourite authors. Maturana(2011) says: "Present isn't a plane slice of a temporal lineal flow, it's a multidimensional changing matrix of feelings, desires, fears, doings, aspirations,etc., that constitutes every instant the domain of conscious and inconscious orientations of the drift of our living" "Our living is always local when it happens and is a continuous changing present in the flow of its happening" "Our human living occurs in the conscious of the past, present and the future that we invent when we explain the happening of our living as people."
I always find very interesting when the physicist talk about time as the fourth dimension, but I never understood that, jeje. Thank you so much for posts, it helps me.
Literature cited
Maturana,H.(2011) Responsabilidad en la localidad del vivir.
En http://matriztica.cl/2011/05/16/responsabilidad-en-la-localidad-del-vivir/ Taken on May, 28th,2012.

[MikeG]

Relativity is best explained in the words of the great man, Einstein himself.

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity."

And time is described as follows:

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.”

Probably not what you were looking for, but science should also be fun, and these quotes are fun.

[M Paul Lloyd]

I can only agree MikeG.

[MikeG]

Did someone mention philosophers? This helpful resource explains all about em
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Philosophy

This is an extract from the link provided by SW.

Philosophy...a combination of the Greek words philos ("love") and sophia ("potato")

Funny guy, but what was he smoking when he wrote this?

[Shadowwolf]

Sounds not dissimilar to a Douglas Adams or Monty Python style of left-field humour.