Comment on How did people refer to clockwise movement before the invention of the clock?

• Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Honestly the hardest concept for me to grasp in organic chemistry was left vs right chirality. I could understand why they were different, but fuck me if i could ever consistently identify them.

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• kuneho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You have to specify which part you’re referring to

  What do you mean by that?

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  • Nash42@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Turning right, looking at the top of the clock, is different from turning right while looking at the bottom of the clock. And so on.

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    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You’re not entirely wrong, but the convention is to refer to the top of the wheel. But you could be looking at the wheel from the other side, which would change its direction from your perspective.

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      • kuneho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s true, but saying clockwise/anticlockwise also works with fixed perspective, unless the thing itself has a fixed orientation. butnifbthelat’s the case, left/right works the same.

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  • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No matter which direction a ball rolls, part of it moves to the right, and part to the left (either top right and bottom left, or vice versa). If you don’t specify which part of the ball you’re looking at, it could be either top or bottom, so the statement is ambiguous.

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    • kuneho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      but without this information, clockwise and anticlockwise also ambigous.

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      • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        No, they are well-defined. There is no missing information in “clockwise”. There is missing information in “right”.

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