2020-05-04: Words of Wisdom From alt.folklore.computers      rak
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I was reading alt.folklore.computers this afternoon and came
across the following words of wisdom [0]:

    Life is like a toilet roll.  The closer you get to the end,
    the faster it seems to go.

This reminded me of an experiment I learned about in school. It
showed that children can perceive shorter time intervals than
adults. The experimental set-up is as follows: the subject is
presented with a blinking light bulb, and their task is to press
a button as soon as the bulb stops flickering. The experimenter
then gradually increases the rate at which the light bulb
blinks. Adults allegedly press the button much sooner than
children.

This experiment reminds me of my personal experience as a child,
where I could sometimes see CRTs and fluorescent lights flicker,
but my parents couldn't.

Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any sources for this
experiment. I did, however, find the following interesting
tidbit on Wikipedia [1]:

    One day to an 11-year-old would be approximately 1/4,000 of
    their life, while one day to a 55-year-old would be
    approximately 1/20,000 of their life. This helps to explain
    why a random, ordinary day may therefore appear longer for a
    young child than an adult. The short term appears to go
    faster in proportion to the square root of the perceiver's
    age.


[0] Message-ID: <eb842702-e55a-41ec-a612-0b95bec6bb79@googlegroups.com>
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Changes_with_age