Explorer
Curiosity only — not for scheduling. Real zones live on the board and Compare.
Educational / approximate. Do not use these demos to plan meetings.
Quick facts
- A day on Venus is longer than its year: 243 Earth days to rotate, 225 to orbit the Sun.
- Leap seconds are occasionally added to UTC to keep atomic time aligned with Earth rotation.
- GPS satellites run slightly faster clocks and need constant relativity corrections.
- Light takes about 8 minutes 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to Earth.
- Time zones were standardized largely because of railroad schedules.
Time lab demos
Velocity time dilation
Special relativity toy: how fast a clock runs for a traveler vs Earth, at a fraction of light speed.
Traveler elapsed
8.66 years
Perception interval
A random pause (3–7s). When it ends, see how long it actually lasted.
Theories of time
Culture
Cyclical time
Ancient Maya
Great cycles of creation and destruction.
Eternal now
Buddhist
Emphasis on present-moment awareness.
Dreamtime
Aboriginal
Ancestral time that coexists with the present.
Yugas
Hindu
Vast cosmic ages spanning millions of years.
How we measured time
Sundial
Ancient Egypt
Sun shadow tracks daytime hours.
Water clock
Babylon
Flow of water measures intervals.
Marine chronometer
18th century
Sea-going precision for longitude.
Atomic clock
Modern
Atomic transitions define the second.