Put a subject in a room containing only a chair and table. The room should not have windows. On the table is a button which the subject is to push when he/she believes that one, five, thirty, and sixty minutes have passed. The subject would not be allowed to have any sort of device that could be used to mark time (watches (duh), musical devices such a Walkman, or any reading material)
How close do YOU think you could get? Do humans have some sort of internal timepiece that could help them?
This sort of thing varies from person to person, as far as I can tell. I know that I have a very bad sense of time. Unless I contually kept count, I would not do well in that experiment (which I believe has been done many times). And even then only at the one and five minute marks would I be close, seeing as I can’t count exact seconds.
An odd thing, though, is that I can always wake up without an alarm. Even if I have to be up at 6:00 AM one morning, and 8:00 AM the next, and 7:23 the day after, I will be pretty close (within fifteen minutes, but never after the time has passed.) So I guess my unconcious mind has a better sense of time than my concious.