Whenever my psychology teacher tried to explain the Circadian rhythm, he skewed one point. It's not a hugely critical point, and he wasn't too far off, but the way he skewed it irritated the living daylights out of me (which is sort of a really horrible pun because this deals with daylight)(please just ignore that - I'm tired and it's showing).
The term circadian rhythm (see if you can parse it) refers to the biological clock or daily cycle of energy levels that humans (and pretty much all surface-dwelling animals) go through. There are phases of increased wakefulness and increased drowsiness. The exact pattern varies from species to species.
Here's the interesting part and the part where Mr. Crawley goes a little bit wrong. If we were be to removed from all light and schedule cues, our circadian rhythm would follow a 25-hour pattern rather than the 24-hour pattern that most of us live by. The presence of sunlight light inhibits the production of the hormone melatonin in the pineal gland (he didn't know the name of the hormone or the gland, but I'm not very concerned about that) and resets the circadian rhythm to the usual 24-hour cycle.
Mr. Crawley went wrong on two points: one actually irritated me, and I probably wouldn't have taken note of the other if I hadn't already been irritated. He frequently attributed the 24-hour adjusted cycle to scheduling tendencies and completely ignored the extreme importance of light. One can have a completely unscheduled day, but if natural light is present, the circadian rhythm is as it should be. Gollum's circadian rhythm wouldn't have been off because he had nothing to do - it would have been off because he lived underground for years (he didn't use Smeagol as an illustration, but I like to). Mr. Crawley implied by his tone of voice and a few other clue that the 25-hour cycle was the better cycle and that we were somehow being restricted from natural life by the existence of schedules. Furthermore, one day I added that sunlight was the main factor in resetting the biological clock, and he made some absurd comment to the effect that the fact that we have to add a leap day every four years because we aren't following the 25-hour cycle. That makes no sense. The earth's rotation follows a 24-hour cycle, so it would behoove us to do the same. The earth's orbit follows a 365.25whatever day cycle, and the extra .25whatever isn't added because we ignore the 25-hour cycle that the unchecked circadian rhythm would follow.
I am completely aware that this doesn't matter at all to most people. After the few days he mentioned the circadian rhythm, it didn't even really matter to me. It's okay that he seemed to interpret the resetting of the biological clock in a slightly different fashion. He may not have intended to imply that schedules were evil, and there's a good chance that he realized pretty quickly that the whole leap day thing was unreasonable. It did matter to me on the day I started this, so I thought I'd type it all the way through anyway.
3 comments:
Point the first:
I learned a new thing, so it was interesting.
Point the second:
You asked me to parse something (even though it was Latin); therefore I was interested.
Point the third:
Gollum is your example. Tolkien examples for the win.
Point the fourth:
You cause me to laugh.
Ergo, it matters. QED
I knew it was in Latin, and I wanted to see if you could parse it anyway. I realized afterward that it's not exactly the easiest word to break down without much knowledge of Latin.
It means "around/approximately day" (circa- meaning around and -dian referring to day) in reference to the fact that the cycle doesn't quite match up to the 24-hour solar day.
What does QED stand for?
But I did parse it! I used the words "circle" and "diurnal" to do it. Initially I thought it would have to do with flowers that follow the sun, but that was untrue.
QED is what we write to say that something has been proven.
Having forgotten what it stands for, Wikipedia tells me it is "quod erat demonstrandum," literally meaning, "which was to be demonstrated."
I deeply desire to learn Latin.
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