How do you explain “counterclockwise” to a child with a digital watch?
–Anonymous
That’s a great question! We have a lot of clocks in the apartment, but none of them are analog.
So what would we say instead? A variation of righty tighty, lefty loosey comes to mind.
January 12, 2018
you’re asking me?
I remember my own way of telling time when I was little.
should I even admit this? lol.
I said things like it’s 5 minutes past 6:30.
I’m telling this to a physicist? LOL. well there ya go.
that’s math humility for you. 🙂
I think that is ingenious! Good for you!
As a navy machinest mate (mechanic) and commercial power plant operator, closing valves was always “righty, tighty” and opening valves was always “lefty, loosy.”
For some reason, once I made it to the control room and, later, to the simulator, I seemed to be prone to going to “open” on valves when I intended to close them or “close” on valves when I meant to open them. Eventually, I discovered why. It wasn’t me. It was the way the control room and been “engineered.”
The switches in control room were set up such that valve switches were operated in the counterclockwise direction — left — to close and clockwise — right — to open; totally counterintuitive and poorly human factored.
The I realized that switches out in the plant on control panels and breakers were set up, for the most part, exactly the opposite, righty tighty, lefty loosey, as one would expect.
What a stupid thing to do!
I would be clueless. Explain time to a youngster is anther one can be diffucult one to do
I imagine it’s a lot easier with digital clocks. There is still the business of 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, going back to Babylonian days.
I suspect there many outdated concepts – which as an older person means nothing to a younger person.
I was on the bus the other day – got talking to this young, probably late 20s after a woman got on with a pram (baby buggy) that is very modern a 3-wheeler where the front wheel is very large. It wasn’t one of the more modern buses with lift up seats for such carriages and she had a lot of difficulty getting anchored…
that got me talking to the young about the progress of these type of baby prams and how in earlier time, the pram was on hooks on the front of the bus, then later they had folding prams and these was a place outside but like a luggage rack under our seats…then another type of pram came, which you still see, more for toddlers that folds up and then over…
(I did find a picture on Pinterest but I can’t load it here…of the prams on the front of the buses)
then he asked me about fares and how that had changed…especially after a woman getting off tried to tag-off on one of the old concept machine that actually is covered but can outfox you if you are not concentrating (not all the buses still have that old machine)
actually there have been a vast array of changes to using public transport in about the last 5 years…
sadly it’s not my grammar that is messed up here…rather the gender of the askee (young man) who is new to Auckland
We still have a wall phone, and once a girl knocked on the door and asked if she could borrow a phone to call her mother. I said, sure, and showed her the phone. She had no idea how to dial a number, so I had to show her. 🙂
LOL on the phone and the young girl… I would imagine the same would happen here!
If you are looking north the sun crosses the sky traveling counterclockwise. If you are looking south, the sun will be traveling clockwise across the sky. But actually the sun is standing still relative to the Earth, and we are rotating clockwise with the Earth if we are looking north, which gives the illusion that the sun is traveling counterclockwise. Everything that goes counterclockwise is also going clockwise. It is all a matter of perspective. Does that help?
I’ll stick with righty tighty, lefty loosey. 🙂
Teach them the clock first then it would be much easier, I think. Good grief, I don’t know, I don’t remember how I taught my kids. 😉
It’s going to be harder and harder to find analog clocks, so I’m guessing they will eventually try something else.
In India, among the Sanathana Dharmis, it is no problem at all. Pradakshina is clockwise and apradhakshina is anticlockwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parikrama
Nice link. Thank you!
I would just say, imagine a circle.
If you go around it to the “right”, it’s clockwise
And to go to the “left” is counterclockwise.
Then of course I’d have to explain what “counter” meant.
And then just for fun, I’d try explaining how to count back change.
😉
You have to start at the top of the circle. I was picturing that when I thought of righty tighty, lefty loosey. It would be easy enough to teach, just have the kids draw it even if they had never seen an analog clock.