Philosophy
Small second watches seem more desirable to me when I want the time to pass slowly and sweeping hands when I want time to pass quickly. Since overall I feel like time passes way too fast I mostly prefer wearing small seconds or no seconds. However, in the 2020 quarantine, I felt that the best uplifting effect was given by sweeping seconds.
From this latter group, I have felt the most impact with quartz watches. A smooth mechanical sweeping second hand will still give the illusion of a relatively longer second because you can usually observe about 8 or 16 distinct ticks, but the quartz delivers a straight and cruel brutality. A second passes fast. You blink and it's gone. This effect, I believe, is directly proportional to the speed at which the tip of the hand moves from one second's index to the next. While both watches are measuring the same phenomena, the mechanical one takes one second to get from one index to another. In opposition to this, the quartz hand moves lightning fast and jolts with amazing speed, only to wait one second again.
Must be the way our mind perceives action and inaction in relation to time, since, while similar in duration, the complex action of a mechanical watch is comparatively harder to assimilate than the pause of the quartz followed by its single, longer tick.
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