TIME AND CLOCKS FOR THE SPACE AGE

by James & Jane Fitz-Randolph Jesperson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 19, 1980

This begins with a simple inquiry into the nature of time and clocks (""Think of 'now' as a kind of gate. . .""), which soon flows into a discussion of irregularities in the earth-sun clock, the superior accuracy of the atomic clock (100,000 times more stable) that has replaced it as a standard, and the problems (including ""rubber seconds"" and ""leap seconds"") involved in the changeover. The uses of exact time measurements in TV, telephone systems, cameras, computers, and so on, are surveyed in Part Two, which makes its point but suffers from the frequent need to stray off from the subject of time without going deeply into the technologies surveyed. Part Three, on time and science, gets back to basic questions, hauling in very simplified explanations of special and general relativity theory, the Quantum theory, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle to show that ""there is no such thing as absolute simultaneity,"" that ""circumstances and not the basic laws of nature dictate the directional flow of time,"" and that ""the waviness of nature"" makes it impossible to know the exact positions of ""the almost infinitely thin hands of our super-clock."" Better explanations of the theories exist to be sure, but this could kindle that first spark of scientific interest in readers who are pulled in by curiosity about the nature of time, and further intrigued by such concepts as ""blurred time"" and ""fuzzy atoms"" and the relativity of time to gravity and motion.

Pub Date: Oct. 19, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION