virtural memory test

Hi, I am 16  year old mac head starting to learn how to program, I have
just been through "Learn C on the Mac" by Dave Mark and wanted to use some
of my knowledge on a science project for high school.

One idea I have is the

 "Performance difference between Real and Virtual memory"

There's a few things I need help with to develop this experiment and hope
someone can spare a little of their time to help me out on them.

Is it possible to store something in a high address, so that it is on the
hard drive instead of the real RAM, or would I get the same results by
storing data in a file and the same data in memory and just comparing the
time taken for each to load. I plan to measure speed difference by calling
the time() function when I request the data and again after the data is
loaded. Is there a more precise way of measuring the time. ticks?.

Please give me advise on better ways to carry out this project.

Thanks

Roneel.