Law of Conservation of Stress

If it existed, it would

state that:
There is a fixed amount of stress per life time per person, that remains constant over time, or conserved over time. This means that the total amount of stress a person has can not be added to nor subtracted from. It can only be transferred to a different time in said person's life, or converted into other forms of stress.


example problem:


If I had a total of one billion (1x10^9) units of stress in my entire life time and I live for 90 years, describe the relationship between having two exam periods, with exams worth 15% each, and having one exam period, with exams worth 30% each. Assume that the amount of stress per year is the same for every year of my life.

Calculating stress for one highschool year.

then every year, i should average up to 11111111.11 units of stress. (1 billion units of stress divided by 90 years)


lets take out the weekends,winter, march, and summer breaks and say they take up 1000000 units of stress in a year.

we're left with 1011111.11 units of stress.
lets take half of this stress, and give it to stuff outside of school (extracurricular activities, social life, family, etc), since half of the time i'm awake is not in school.

now we have 505555.56 units of stress for school.

let's take 3/4 of that and put that into regular school work, tests, projects, assignments.

379166.67 units
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there are two ways to divide these 379166.67 units of stress.

1. take some stress, and divide it evenly over each day (non exam period). Assuming that i'm a hard worker, and decide not to procrastinate - a good student, i feel less stressed, as stress is divided evenly.

2. or, i have some really relaxed days, and some really stressful days, where i'm catching up on past homework, or trying to quickly finish a project. - procrastinating student - i feel more stressed at intervals, as stress is not divided evenly.
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exams - 126388.89 units of stress. (505555.56 - 379166.67)

1. when they are worth 15%, and two exams a year - 63194.445 units of stress per exam time
2. when they are worth 30%, and one exam a year - the whole 126388.89 units of stress per exam time.

this means that the current exam system i have is twice as stressful as the exam system i had last year, and the previous years before that.

Answer: The relationship is, that when exams are worth more, and all at the same time, then there is more stress than if the exams were worth less and spread out throughout the year. Having one exam period per year and worth 30% each is twice as stressful as having two exam periods a year worth 15% each because it is unevenly spread. The more exams we have per year and with lower % makes it less stressful.

A factor to be considered would be how we can tolerate different amounts of stress, and how a certain amount of stress will be too much, or have certain psychological, or physical effects. that would be interesting.


* by the way, there is actually something called the law of conservation of stress, but it's not the kind of stress i'm talking about, it has something to do with physics, how much stress or tension(?) an object can hold? lol something like that i dont know. 

** this is just a made up thing.