• @leadore@lemmy.world
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    1011 months ago

    OK let’s have a lesson for those who find this difficult. First, remember that little kids pick this up quickly and easily, so you can too!

    We all know there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day, right? and that the day is divided into the a.m. of 12 hours and the p.m. of 12 hours.

    So analog clocks show those 12 hours as the numbers 1-12 evenly spaced around the clock face. Now look a little closer and you see it’s also divided into 60 marks with a tick mark for each of the 60 seconds/minute or 60 minutes/hour. Hang on, we’re almost there!

    The little hand points to the HOUR number (1-12). If it’s in between two numbers, that means the time is in between those two hours.

    The big hand points to the MINUTE tick mark. Notice that the 1-12 numbers coincide with each 5th tick mark so it’s easy to count them. Just count by 5’s! So if the big hand is between the 3 and the 4, that means the minute of the hour is between 15 and 20, look at which tick mark for the exact minute.

    Now, can you figure out how the second hand works? Good! Kindergarten dismissed!

    /s

  • @DNOS@lemmy.ml
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    111 months ago

    Guys lets be honest why point at small Numbers which you have to read in a specific sequence while doing some math when you can easily and nowadays probably more efficiently (paper-ink) display them… Analog clocks are going to disappear and people will watch at them with the same eyes as we watch a sundial…(Btw I had to search for the translation of the world sundial that’s how common it is … 😉)
    I can ready It but i get teens Who dont

  • @Raglesnarf@lemmy.world
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    111 months ago

    I just really enjoy the photo, the character looks funny. I agree that shit like this just causes division but at the same time it’s like any other rude meme towards group X or person Y. just another dumb meme to go ha ha to and move on

  • @Halosheep@lemm.ee
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    1011 months ago

    Real talk, is there some benefit to an analog clock that would prevent them from all being replaced by digital ones? Being able to know exactly the time in a moment’s glance seems better to me.

    They’re certainly not better looking than a digital one, considering most of the ones used in schools are just the cheapest and most basic version they can get.

    Power requirements maybe? Longevity?

    • @pixelscript@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      An analog clock is just three sets of loading bars with their ends glued together. You can tell geometrically what proportion of each division of time (day, hour, and minute) are spent and what proportion remains. You don’t even need the numbers.

      If you need stopwatch-level precision, sure, a digital display is superior. But how often do you need that? Most of what I need clocks for is, “Oh, it’s about a quarter to noon, I have a lunch appointment to get to”.

      It is my personal preference to visually intuit that the clock hands are roughly separating the hour into 3/4 spent and 1/4 remaining and use that to know how much time I have left to the hour, rather than read the symbols “42” on the display and manually do the mental gymnastics of “well that’s basically 45, which is three quarters of the way to 60 minutes”.

      I’ll admit this benefit is marginal.

      • @Halosheep@lemm.ee
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        211 months ago

        I think that’s an interesting way to look at it. I find it easier to do the mental gymnastics, as you call it.

    • @Faresh@lemmy.ml
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      511 months ago

      Being able to know exactly the time in a moment’s glance seems better to me.

      That seems more like a pro for analogue to me. It’s much easier with an analogue clock since you get a visual presentation of time. Whenever someone tells me a time, I have to first imagine an analogue clock to understand what that time means.

      • @WldFyre@lemm.ee
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        111 months ago

        Lol I don’t think that’s true, and I don’t think those words work the way you used them anyway

        • @RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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          111 months ago

          Sounds like you just didn’t understand. Each hour of the 12 on the clock takes up 30° of the circle, and we measure time in cycles of hours, minutes, seconds that all match up well with the 360° of a circle.

          • @WldFyre@lemm.ee
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            011 months ago

            Cutting pizza would also teach kids a geometrical understanding of how circles work, I don’t see how that translates at all to being innate to reading a clock. I know tons of people who can read a clock who suck at math. It seems like an incredibly weak assertion.

            • @RaoulDook@lemmy.world
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              011 months ago

              Making any excuse to not learn how analog clocks work is what’s really a weak assertion. It’s not that fucking hard.

    • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      511 months ago

      It proves to be somewhat useful as an example when trying to teach fractions and decimals, something we are absolutely terrible at teaching. Incomprehension of fraction to decimal conversion is why 90% of people who say they are bad at math, say they are bad at math.

      • @MrShankles@reddthat.com
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        211 months ago

        Incomprehension of fraction to decimal conversion is why 90% of people who say they are bad at math, say they are bad at math

        I feel called out. I was in high-school Calculus (11th grade) before I “truly” understood fractions. Like, I honestly somehow managed to make it to Calculus without knowing how to add and subtract fractions without a calculator. Thought I was dumb in math until 9th grade algebra, and didn’t start becoming a bit of a math nerd until Calculus

        • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          311 months ago

          I wouldn’t say that’s the sole purpose, just an additional purpose to being able to tell time. It’s also useful if the kid wants to be a pilot.

          • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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            011 months ago

            So what are the purposes? Nobody uses analog clocks anymore so afaict:

            1. To teach fractions
            2. Something to do with being a pilot???

            What am I missing? 😛

            • @Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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              111 months ago

              Clockwise, counter clockwise. Classic time shorthand (IE, half past ten, quarter to eleven). Time estimations (easy to see a half minute on a analog clock, digital just goes from 2:00 to 2:01)

              I think analog clock displays are more elegant, and are overall nicer than digital. Personal preference though.

              • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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                111 months ago

                I’m not saying nobody should learn it, I’m saying it’s not a great use of school resources. If you appreciate the aesthetic or functionality, then by all means go out and learn it. I personally like them, but I think that it should remain out of the curriculum for purely practical reasons.

                I still don’t really see any useful skills that learning an analog clock teaches you, besides how to read an analog clock, which isn’t useful because analog clocks are so rare IRL.
                The handful of useful skills they assist teaching isn’t worth it because there are better ways to teach those things. The clock isn’t so good at teaching all those things that it’s worth using the clock instead.

    • @pseudopsyche@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      311 months ago

      I prefer analogue clocks because I tend to have time blindness with ADHD, and it’s easier to see at a glance how much time is visually left in an hour or how much time is passing with an analogue clock. Just knowing that “15 min left” isn’t really as effective as being able to see a visual representation of “15 min left”, for example.

    • @WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
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      11 months ago

      From a practicality standpoint, a round clockface is easier to create a mechanical drive system for.

      You can create a digital mechanical face (see: Flipboard style numerical displays) but they usually require more gears and are more susceptible to wear and tear than the gears of a round clock face.

      The simplest designs for mechanical digital displays actually just take 24 hour and 60 minute/second circular displays and hide the other numerals as the clock face spins around. Technically this I suppose counts as both analog and digital?

      Example:

      Image

      As for electronic displays? Nah not much of a reason to use a round display unless again, you have an electric-mechanical drive and want to save on gears and parts.

    • @windpunch@feddit.org
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      11 months ago

      Genuine question, how precise do you need the time to be? Maybe you actually need precise readings for something. I figured that “on the 5 min marker”, “slightly before/behind the 5 min marker” and “in the middle of two 5 min markers” is precise enough for me. And I see a hand at these positions faster than reading numbers.

      I think for precise readings (eg. entering the time I start working), the speed is the same for me, but obviously I didn’t test this.

      I also think looking at the time but a few seconds later still not knowing what time it is happens less on an analog clock.

      I don’t know how much personal preference influences this though.

    • @kshade@lemmy.world
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      411 months ago

      They convey time instantly, without reading. You don’t even need the numbers for them to work. It’s like showing a progress bar versus just giving the percentage as a number.

  • @nexguy@lemmy.world
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    1411 months ago

    Wife, for years, thought the “second hand” on a clock was called that because it was the “2nd” hand on the clock…which confused her. Took her over 30 years to realize it’s the “seconds” hand because it counts seconds.

    • mercator_rejection
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      811 months ago

      I guess she is not entirely off, either. It’s called that because it is the second division of an hour.

      • @bitMasque@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        No, screw that whataboutism. When I went to school, I learned so much information that is virtually useless to most people, and not nearly enough skills and knowledge that would actually be helpful in daily life. I would like to see the situation improve for future generations.

        Analogue clocks are everywhere and being able to read them is still important. Besides, if schools aren’t even capable of teaching something so simple to students, I think that calls into question their ability to teach far more complex things.

        • @4lan@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Perhaps the fact that we pay them like 30 grand a year is a factor? That’s how much my one bedroom apartment costs 😂 there’s no money left over for food or loans or electricity or gas

          Financial stress has been proven to make you dumber

        • wuphysics87
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          -111 months ago

          We also need to teach them how to write in cursive so they can read the declaration of independence.

        • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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          -211 months ago

          How is that whataboutism?

          It’s not that schools have become unable to teach kids to read analog clocks or kids have become unable to learn it. It’s not that they can’t it’s that they don’t

          But speaking of whataboutism, your argument is literally “well what about all the useless stuff that I learned in school???”
          How about they stop teaching useless stuff, and the first things they can throw out are cursive and analog clocks.

          • @bitMasque@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I’m not screaming about the young people; I was “the young people” not that long ago. Not everyone who criticizes education is an out of touch boomer resisting every societal change.

            Actually, analogue clocks have been obsoleted in almost every way by digital clocks for at least half a century, as digital wristwatches first hit the market in the 1970s. And yet, analogue clocks are still found everywhere. Classes, stores, train stations, homes, offices, not to mention the majority of wristwatches, still mostly use analogue clocks. In fact, excluding screens, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people came across more analogue clocks than digital clocks on a daily basis. They’re technologically obsolete, but haven’t fallen out of use.

            • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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              211 months ago

              I have to have an analog clock within sight in the morning. When I first wake up I’m too tired and bleary eyed to think about numbers but I know what angle the minute hand will be at when I have leave to catch the bus to work. When you’re familiar with an analog clock it’s far more user friendly than looking at some numbers and have to do some math. Sure it’s simple math, but first thing in the morning, I’d rather just glance at the minute hand and when I see the angle I just know.

              So I don’t think it’s not going away despite it being obsolete, it’s not going away because it’s more user friendly. Sure there’s a learning curve, but once you’ve gotten the hang of it, it’s a more efficient way for a human to get a sense of time, which in many cases is more important than having a numerical representation of time.

    • Max Günther
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      311 months ago

      They are creating more and more idiots out there. The trend of “Help, our students don’t understand xyz, let’s stop teaching that immediately!” is disgusting. Maybe think of teaching it in a different way or just spending more time on that topic?

  • @thesushicat@lemmy.world
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    411 months ago

    It’s true. I teach college kids, and a couple of years ago my class was taking a midterm. The room didn’t have a clock so I put my watch on the document camera display so they’d know how much time was left. A girl in the front row asked me what time it was, because she couldn’t tell time. After she turned in her test, thinking she must be kind of embarrassed about this, I told her I’d be happy to teach her how to tell time. She gave me a look like “ok, boomer” and said no thanks.

  • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    311 months ago

    Analog clocks are like cursive, there isn’t any real world benefit so it seems like we should spend that effort on one of the many other things that schools could teach.

    • @vga@sopuli.xyz
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      11 months ago

      I feel like there’s a bit of a difficulty difference. One requires basic spacial understanding. The other requires hundreds of hours of practice to become good. Nevertheless, learning both is a good idea for different reasons. Activating your brains via fine hand coordination is a great activity for children.

      As a comparison, think about how much writing chinese children have to learn in school. They don’t come out as exactly poorly educated, rather vice versa. Then again, the competetiveness in chinese schools is pretty brutal, at least if I can trust what my chinese colleagues have told me.

      • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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        -211 months ago

        I shouldn’t say there is no value in learning cursive or analog clocks, I just want to say that analog/cursive is being taught in place of more valuable lessons.

    • They look nice. Some of them anyway, not specifically school clocks which I mentally associate with “when is this day going to fucking end?” But reading a clock is not a difficult skill that takes a long time to teach.

  • @psycho_driver@lemmy.world
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    1311 months ago

    Not sure if true or clickbait, but if true it means we’ll eventually lose clockwise and counter-clockwise as descriptive references.

  • @PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca
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    1611 months ago

    So many edgelords in the comments shit talking younger generations for learning different things.
    Y’all sound like old farts crying about how schools stopped using slide rules and how modern music just isn’t as good.