Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Dear Expert, I want to do a science project on the question: why does time fly when you're having fun? I have made an experiment to measure how people perceive time passing when they're having fun, and when they are anticipating something, and when they're bored.I think they will perceive time going fast when they're having fun, and slow when they are bored or anticipating something, but I don't know why this happens. Is there a way to design an experiment to find out why this happens? Thank you, Emonster.

Hi,

You have asked a really good question!!! I think the answer is yes it is possible to devise an experiment to determine if mood affects the perception of elapsed time. Here is a paper by some college students that attempted to measure the effect of mood on the accuracy of time estimation of the duration of 32 second radio advertisements(see the Methods section for how they did it):

http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=7647

Here is a paper testing whether adding music to videogame play decreases the ability to accurately estimate elapsed time of play:

http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/display.asp?id=7647

Here is another study attempting to measure whether trying to do two things at once( estimate time and memorize or identify objects) affected the accuracy of the time estimation:

http://medind.nic.in/jak/t06/i1/jakt06i1p43.pdf

Finally here is an article describing how someone tested whether being really scared makes time seem to slow down:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ext ... stops-time

You might find this book chapter interesting as it surveys what is known about your question:

http://www.worldscibooks.com/etextbook/ ... _chap1.pdf

This looks like a really interesting question that a lot of people are interested in. It should make a great science fair project. Have fun with it!!!

Best regards,

Barrett L Tomlinson

Hi emonster,

This is a great question to start with, I'd love to see your results!

Let's see how you might go about approaching this. You'll need:

-different conditions to put people in--a fun activity, a boring activity, etc. I think it would make sense to start with just two conditions, to keep it simple. Think about what you find fun or boring and how you can have people do that in a well-controlled setting for your experiment. You'll have to take their watches and make sure there are no clocks in the room!

-a way to discover how people perceive the passage of time. Hmmm...maybe you can interrupt them at various intervals in the activity, and ask how much time they think has passed? Or tell them to do the activity for a certain amount of time, and see if their finishing is close to that time?

I suggest that first, you just try your experimental setup with just a few people. This is called a "pilot" experiment and scientists do them all the time. It's a chance to see if your plan works and fix any kinks or problems before you do the big, "real" experiment. For that "real" experiment, you'll want to have as many subjects participate as possible to get the best results. (What I mean is, if you just do the experiment with your mom and dad, all that tells you is how your mom and dad respond. You want to get as close as you can to how everybody perceives time, and so the more subjects you have, the better.)

I hope this helps you think about how to approach this question. I think it's great that you've come up with a question that is interesting to you. Good luck and post back if you've got further questions!

Amber

Thank you, Barrett, for giving me the list of links that I can use.
Emonster.

Dear Amber,
Thank you for your response. I think I will do various participants of different ages try to type a dictionary page and play some kind of video game. Then we will see how close they are to guessing the amount of time that passed.
Emonster.

That sounds like a good plan!