Last week our special guest was Past President and D.G. in waiting Ron McLeod.  Ron was invited to the meeting to celebrate our 30^th Birthday with us by Penno.  Unhelpfully, everyone other than Penno planned to celebrate the event the following week.  Ron spoke in very entertaining fashion about his time at the club.  Ron has done much for the club, including being the original editor of this publication.  Ron won the district bulletin award in his first year as editor.  The Central Spoke peaked very early and all you get now is the dregs.  It was great to see Ron again and hear him talk about his memories of the club.

 

 

Albert Einstein famously lived in Switzerland during the important years when he developed his theories of special relativity and general relativity.  We need to consider Einstein’s theories of relativity when trying to calculate the age of our club.

 

Even though Einstein lived in Bern, he was a big fan of FC Basel, who played FC Zurich this week, flogging them 4 – 0.  The Rotblau rocks on!

Two years ago, we first celebrated our club’s 30^th Birthday.  Some people thought this was wrong and so we celebrated our 30^th Birthday again last year.  Last week Penno invited Ron McLeod to our 30^th Birthday lunch and we plan to have another 30^th Birthday lunch this week.  Our Charter President claims the club is 31 and the Birthday should be in November. How old is our club?

 

This week we asked the Central Spoke’s Theoretical Physics Committee to prepare a report to answer this question;

 

A year is the time it takes for the planet to orbit once around the sun.  This is not a fixed period; it varies a little from year to year and it is also gradually slowing down from year to year.  Also, this measurement of time depends a great deal on which planet you happen to be on.

 

A calendar year on earth is 365 days or 366 days in a leap year.  This is at best a rough approximation of time.

 

Scientifically a Julian year is a unit of time consisting of exactly 31,557,600 seconds, where a second is defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a ground-state hyperfine caesium 133 atom. So, if we can calculate the number of Julian years that have passed since the club was formed, we will know the age of the club.  However, Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity tell us that time is a variable.  Special relativity tells us that travelling at speed dilates (slows down) time.  An object travelling at high speed experiences time slowed down relative to an object travelling at a lower speed.  General relativity tells us that gravity also dilates time, slowing it down for object under the influence of a gravitational field.  An object orbiting earth experiences time travelling slightly quicker than objects on the surface.  Engineers must factor this in when designing clocks for GPS satellites, for example.

 

So; was our club 30 two year ago, one year ago, last week, or this week, or were we 31 last week or this week, or are we 31 in November as our Charter President claims?  Each of these solutions is correct for an infinite number of velocity and gravitational field combinations, and so all are equally correct.  So, the club is as old or young as you want it to be, it all depends on your velocity and the gravitational field you are subjected to. 

 

Also, we are 31, probably in November.  Bruce says so.  Happy 30^th anniversary everybody.

The details again;

Please invite past members if you are in contact with them.

 

Less well known than Einstein’s theories of special relativity and general relativity, is his theory of drink relativity.  Drinking compresses time.  So, for example, a man drinking two glasses of wine at once will experience time passing faster than a man drinking just one glass at a time.  Professional scientist Brendan O’Neill is currently conducting his own study into drink relativity, as Lew demonstrates with this photo;

 

Central to the problem of drink relativity, is what physicists refer to as Officer’s Judgement Experience Paradox.  Noted physicist Lew Officer explains;