ImogenBe honest, can you read an analog clock?
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14 - 21 = YES
14 - 21 = NO
22 - 29 = YES
22 - 29 = NO
Poll ended at .
wraptile@HopelessDemigod It'd take any adult like 2 minutes to figure out how an analog clock works even if they've never seen before would be my guess.
Mr. Teatime@wraptile
It took me much longer than that, with explanations, and while I'm fine reading them, there's still some conscious effort involved, decades later.
I think they could be easier to figure out if the short pointer did not relate to the big numbers, which look like labels to the minute scale.
Also: Any way to indicate time with 12h is needlessly indefinite. Appending "AM" or "PM" is a poor solution (the meaning of "12:00PM" is impossible to determine on your own)
@HopelessDemigod
@Mr_Teatime @HopelessDemigod that's interesting! Maybe I overestimated how intuitive analog clock design actually is. All I remember when I had to learn it as a kid it was pretty easy.
I think the AM/PM is irrelevant though as you wouldn't start learning without having context of what time of the day it is so it wouldn't interfere with your ability to grok the design as you know AM/PM implicitly already. That's assuming you give an accurate, working clock to the subject.
@wraptile
yes, the AM/PM thing is fine as long as
you're reading a clock to figure out the current time.
It only becomes annoying (to me) when used to communicate times.
Regardless, analogue watch faces take me longer to read than digital 24h ones, despite being dominant when I grew up.
lizzzzard@Mr_Teatime @wraptile @HopelessDemigod did you know how this came to be? Clock towers. Because you needed to be able to see the time from a distance. Since the minute marks are smaller than the hour marks you need the pointer to be closer to or overlaping with the mark in order to figure it out from afar.
@lizzard
yes, and putting the hour marks on the outside would be a waste of space while the minute marks would be closer together and harder to discern.
I suspect that's also the reason for going with 12h faces: Fewer intervals to show. And sundials also had about 12 hours because they didn't work at night (and I'm sure the Church preferred 12 to 24).
These days, 24h clock faces with hours outside would make some sense to me, but switching now would be *hard*.
@wraptile @HopelessDemigod