“Off with his head!” barks the presiding judge pointing at the defendant Antonio Pigafetta, chronicler and navigator of the first circumnavigation of the world by Ferdinand Magellan. He is one of the eighteen survivors of the original crew of 270 that embarked three years earlier on the record-breaking journey. “You were sloppy in your duties and your log at the end of the voyage is off by one day.” “Where did you loose this day!” he roars, and Pigafetta lowers his gaze in defeat as indeed one day is missing from the ship’s log.
“Excuse me your Excellency,” a confident voice from the audience reaches across the aisles, “there is a simple mathematical explanation.” Young men who just uttered these word steps out of the shadows and continues. "Captain Magellan was sailing as if chasing the Sun setting in the West,” he says, “and each of his days was imperceptibly longer because of that”. “In the end, when Your Excellency have seen that many times the Sun setting over the western horizon, upon coming back Pigaffetta recorded one less such event on the account of following the Sun all the way around the globe.” “Voila!,” he concludes gallantly to the stunned court.
When a mundane event of garroting an incompetent navigator evolves into the discussion of planetary motions it does not go unnoticed. The demonstration of mathematical thinking that occurred that day lit a fuse that little over a hundred years later led to the creation of the Royal Society and the explosion of creativity in mathematics and physics that followed.
The phenomenon explained to the court had power to surprise nearly 350 years later when Mr. Fileas Fogg, a disciplined man of supreme self confidence, made a wager that he will rely on public transportation and travel around the world in 80 days. The choice of eastward direction shortened his days and upon the completion of his journey gave him, as if by a miracle, an extra day which won his bet and turned his life around in the process.
These days mathematics may be in retreat and shrouded in the fog of incomprehensibility but the phenomenon of gaining or loosing a day when one travels around the globe can still inspire.
For those travelers who embark on a journey around the globe we have the following recommendations:
If you are sad, depressed and feeling as if you are constantly falling behind, we suggest westward direction. The lost day will provide a burial ground for your failures where you think that the success was just behind the corner. Rather than beating yourself you will blame Nature for stealing this one day that could have made the difference. You may finally realize that rather that than running blindly ahead all you need to do is to stop.
On the other hand, if you feel powerful and omnipotent, full of ideas and confident, then travel eastward. A gift of an extra day will be yet another opportunity to do something nice or important, climb another mountain or prove a theorem. An extra day will fuel your sense of well being and propel you forward for even more conquests and adventures.
Sadly, mathematics offers less to those going North or South and we have only one advice: dress warmly.
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