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

• 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, 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.

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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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