One-Two-Three, Four-Five-Six: Time Pattern from Math's Tricks?

April 4, 2006--At two minutes and three seconds after one a.m. Wednesday, it will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. Neat, but does the number have any mathematical meaning?

Though every second is unique, that sequence of numbers doesn’t have any implications for how math or time works, mathematicians say. It may be our way of writing it that makes it seem so interesting.

Sometimes, observing patterns of numbers in nature leads to discoveries, and sometimes, "It's just cool," said Mike Breen, of the American Mathematical Society in Providence, R.I.

If you write your numbers in American civilian time -- using a 12-hour clock like most of us do -- the sequence happens again at one in the afternoon. (Whereas a military clock will show the less interesting time 13:02:03 04/05/2006). And British folks will write the one-through-six sequence in about a month, on May fourth, when they'll be jotting down 04/05/06 to mark the day. Tomorrow's Hebrew calendar shows the seventh day of Nisan, 5766. There are traditional calendars in Chinese, Persian, Baha'ai, and Hindi time, and older forms of counting time such as Julian or Roman calendars, that won't show the one-through-six sequence tomorrow.

The opportunity to see the clock in this exact sequence from one to six happens every thousand years, but this kind of numbering doesn’t have any astronomical or mathematical meaning. Human brains are hard-wired to look for patterns -- this helps us identify earth from sky, person from animal, and sweet kitty cat from raging tiger.

However, some mathematical patterns do seem to appear in nature, such as the Fibonacci number sequence, which guides the development of pine cones, sunflowers, broccoli and other plants. The Fibonacci sequence is pretty easy: start from one, add the previous number (zero): one. Add that to the previous number (one): two. Two plus one: three. Three plus two: five. And so on. Plants' internal enzymes may be operating on simple equations like these, to build the spiral shape of a pineapple skin.

Six is kind of a cool number, Breen adds. "Six is a 'perfect' number, because if you add the factors of six: one two and three; you get six. Mathematicians figure there are an infinite even number of perfect numbers, but no one has been able to prove that there are or aren’t any odd perfect numbers."

Contact:

Martha Heil
American Institute of Physics
Tel: 301-209-3088
mheil@aip.org