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.
Comment on How did people refer to clockwise movement before the invention of the clock?
kuneho@lemmy.world 10 months agoYou have to specify which part you’re referring to
What do you mean by that?
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 10 months ago
kuneho@lemmy.world 10 months ago
but without this information, clockwise and anticlockwise also ambigous.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, they are well-defined. There is no missing information in “clockwise”. There is missing information in “right”.
Nash42@programming.dev 10 months 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.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
kuneho@lemmy.world 10 months 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.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, it’s an extra level of confusion. Clockwise/counterclockwise only has one axis of confusion (looking from front or behind) with one option being the obvious default. Left/right have this axis AND the axis of top/bottom for confusion. It’s literally one bit more ambiguous.