Why is clockwise Clockwise? (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Why is clockwise Clockwise? (2008)

homepages.sover.net

45 pointstomkwok48 comments

That's a lot of words for what can be summarized in a short sentence: clockwise is clockwise because that's how a sundial moves in the Northern Hemisphere.

But almost the perfect amount of words for someone who wanted to write an article about a subject and not a quick summary.

I did not even read it, one picture was good enough

That's nice. If there were a competition of who could grasp the main point from this article the quickest without even reading it you might be in the running for first.

That was my guess, but stopped reading after the third paragraph, as there was no substance in the article by that point.

Wow. I did not expect this from HN. It's an interesting, well written account that covers a variety of things in human history that move in such a pattern, yet here are these two belittling it for its lack of brevity.

I think part of it is that the article sounds incredibly speculative and "just so". It doesn't, in other words, appear to be researched, and it is about something (the causality of our directional associations) which would be really hard to know even if you were to stare at all the known historical facts without uncertainty about them.

So if it's all conjecture, and you wipe the conjectures away, you really do have "I think it's either because shadows in the Northern hemisphere go from left to right when you're facing North, or because when you track the Sun across the sky from that hemisphere, you have to face South and then the Sun describes an arc from left to right."

Came here to say the same thing, having not even read the article.

Which surprised me that he didn't pad it out more by talking about why it was based on the Northern Hemisphere. (He calls it "an accident of ... location.") I am unsatisfied with the explanation.

The Northern Hemisphere has twice as much land as the Southern. Today 88% of the World's population lives in the Northern hemisphere. The fact that we are North-biased is not a fluke, but an effect of geography.

> the Semites---a people speaking similar languages, from which both Jews and Muslims descend

s/Muslims/Arabs/

> It seems to be a peculiarity of our human nature that if we are watching the movement of a stick's shadow, that we face north to do so.

No, it just logic. If you're standing south of the stick (facing north), the stick's shadow will move in (roughly) a half-circle throughout the day, starting at the left of the stick, moving right and up (while contracting) to vertical (pointing north), and then extending further to the right until it reaches (almost) east. It will be shorter in the summer and longer in the winter. You could also watch this "from above" (north of the stick, facing south), but if you're south of the stick, looking at the movement of the shadow in the half circle is quite similar to looking at the movement of the sun in the sky (except in the opposite direction).

Most things are reversed if you're in the southern hemisphere.

Exactly. When I saw the title of the post, my immediate thought was that the answer was simple: "because sundials were invented in the Northern Hemisphere." (Or at least they spread primarily from and in the north).

Is it just me, or does it make no sense to call clockwise "left to right?"

After all, when the (end of the) hand of a clock goes around the circle, it goes just as much right to left as it goes left to right, while going clockwise all the time ...

In the context of a sundial (Edit: in the northern hemisphere), it makes more sense. The right-to-left bits are mostly happening at night :)

True, I always think the same thing. But if a wheel was rotating clockwise, it would be moving from left to right. That could be where it comes from.

Depends on if contact is made to the top or the bottom of the wheel. (sorry)

It certainly makes sense for an object encircling you. For a wall clock it then comes down to whether you imagine yourself standing out from the wall on the clock face, or if you are burried into the wall. The first is perhaps the most obvious imagination chosen by most people.

Yes, it depends whether you watch the upper part of the circle, or the bottom part.

But people imagine drawing circle starting at the top, so it makes some sense.

BTW: right is Right, and left is "sinister", so to go from sinister to Right is good, and to go the other way is bad.

BTW2 - in my native language (Polish) the association are similar - prawy (right) means also "virtous", and "lewy" (left) means "counterfeited", "illegal".

Yeah, I guess ... it's just weird to me since you're supposed to be watching the end of the hand, not the part of the clock that the end might be passing now, or be up to 180 degrees away from. Oh well. Language is like that, I guess.

My guess is that it comes from us considering the top of things to be generally more important than the bottom.

And that it's been very much internalized by anyone who drives a car. Turning right? Top of the wheel goes right. Disregard bottom of wheel.

I agree. It reminds me of the beltline around Raleigh. It's a circle.... I always envision it and explain it using clockwise or counterclockwise. However, when you get on at the eastern most point (3:00 on a clock), you are given options to get on the west beltline or the east beltline. You're going west either way. It's infuriating.

I wonder why they didn't decide to name the loops "Inner" and "Outer" like they did for 485 in Charlotte. It makes a lot more sense.

NC has all sorts of crazy road names and designs though. My favorite is 240/26 in Asheville as you'll end up driving West and East simultaneously (26 East is 240 West and 240 East is 26 West).

That and the bridge over the French Broad which is I-240, I-26, Route 74, Route 70, Route 19, Route 23, and Patton Avenue all at the same time across 4 lanes.

From a point of reference at the center of the clock, clockwise is always left to right.

Sundial. Northern hemisphere. Done.

You could have written the same article in four words.

And even at that a quarter of the words aren't needed.

I think "sundial" alone is probably enough for most people to understand.

You also could have skipped right over the link, not commented and moved on with your life. Saved some precious seconds.

Are you @SavedYouAClick from twitter?

If you didn't care to read it, why comment?

I assume the answer to his baseball question (why do baserunner go counter-clockwise?) is that most players bat right-handed. When the idea of running around the bases developed it made sense for batters to run to a base in front of them, which for a right-handed better meant a counter-clockwise trip around the bases.

Regarding the questions at the bottom, much of this is believed to do with one leg being more dominant than the other.

The stronger leg may take longer strides. This manifests in surprising emergent phenomena. Grocery stores for instance tend to be laid out so you enter on the right by the veggies and circle around the back to the meats and dairies and come around the left to check out.

This isn't just limited to humans. Bees will spiral CCW when climbing. Wounded deer tend to drift left after being shot.

Simone Kosig's conclusion is even more surprising: "The basic driver behind this phenomenon seems to be the fact that all cells in nature are composed of amino acids which have a left spin. Chemists can manufacture amino acids with a right spin, yet we can't use them. Apparently both types of amino acids existed in the primordial soup at the beginning of life hundreds of million years ago. Yet life developed only from those with a left spin. The favorite theory is that at that time - when the earth did not yet have the protective ozone shield - radioactive rays from the cosmos did more harm to the amino acids with a right spin. Yet why those with a left spin would be more protected - if at all - is still a mystery."[1]

[1] http://www.somatics.de/artikel/for-professionals/2-article/2...

I'm skeptical of the grocery store claim. Do you have anything to support the claim that one layout is more common than the other (and that would further suggest it's for this reason)?

If I think of all the grocery stores I've been in, I can think of many examples of clockwise layouts. Much more so than counter-clockwise, but that's likely because of my personal brand preferences. The factors in the layout seem to be dominated by:

1. The position of the entrance (if the store is part of a mall, the entrance is often predetermined, and only one layout will be feasible).

2. The brand of the store. Thinking of Canada (and in my experience) Loblaws brand tend to be clockwise, and Sobey's counter-clockwise.

I don't think you're going to get a concrete answer here. I've heard anecdotes justifying both layouts but in all major instances it's by design and not an arbitrary choice. In theory, forcing people to walk in an unnatural direction (clockwise) will make them go slower but be more on edge.

This[1] paper suggests clockwise layouts result in higher sales in discount stores. If you want to put your customers at ease it may not be a good idea to go with a clockwise layout. This[2] article interviews a few retail strategists that describe their intent. This[3] article contends that 'legged-ness' does not matter at all (albeit with a very small pool).

The science is soft enough that I wouldn't put too much weight in the grocery store example specifically. As I recall the trend in the '80's was initially pushing for CW stores to make customers browse slowly but shifted to CCW in the late '90's to make them feel more comfortable. I've heard other stores about shifting the grocery store layout from aisles to the "ring." This roughly coincides with Target stores pre-95 that were competing with Kmart for the blue collar and post '95 that focused on curated, upmarket design for the middle class.

From personal experience, products on end caps absolutely do sell better by 30-60% than those in aisle.

[1] http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/eacr/vol8/eacr_vol8_153.pd... [2] http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223808 [3] http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/do-people-really... & http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1207918/Find-...

I totally believe that the choice of layout can cause those symptoms. But for me, I get them in a CCW layout, despite being right-footed. I think it has more to do with disorientation because I'm simply used to a CW layout. That's why I'm curious about if/how a study would eliminate that bias. Thanks for the paper, I'll take a look.

Interestingly, I find Independent to be mostly CCW, even though it's under Loblaws.

I've always been aware of the direction I go through a store (especially grocery stores) and i've always found that I follow the driving rules for where I live. I stay on the right side of isles and walk counter clockwise. If I were to walk clockwise then walking on the right side of the isles would involve blindly cutting off people coming out of the middle isles (if you actually shop the middle isles its still a problem although slightly less so)

The writer's belief that all racing is counterclockwise turns out to not be correct for horse racing, some auto racing, and even some long-duration foot racing.

http://risaaustralia.blogspot.com/2012/12/why-race-courses-a...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1001/why-are-races-...

It sounds like a really reasonable explanation.

Until you mount the sundial on the wall.

On a wall-mounted sundial, the shadow moves counter-clockwise (in the Northern hemisphere, the hemisphere referred to throughout this article).

Yes, the idea of mapping the horizontal sundial to a vertically-oriented image in our minds seems to hold a certain sense...

...but the question of the vertically mounted sundial should not be so quickly dismissed.

Completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, but does anyone know what generated that page? I really enjoyed the page separators and how that was done to pace the reading, even if it is completely useless in a webpage-format. Thank you.

I don't believe it was generated. Knowing that SoverNet is a internet provider for northern NY and especially VT, I am assuming that this was 'hand-crafted' using a simple (circa 2000) table format with BR elements blocking it out. A quick bit of sleuthing about the author seems to corroborate my assumptions.

I expect they are not generated but hand written, like so many pages from the 90s. There are more examples with a similar but different format¹, and the whole site structure looks antique.

I also enjoyed it, as well as the cleanliness of the whole page. And I found that URW Palladio L is a quite pleasant font.

¹ http://homepages.sover.net/~donnl/iiiivsiv.html

Thank you for that link.

Upon further snooping in the directories, I found a HQX file which decompressed to a file without any extensions. Looking up the first four bytes of the file, I found that it is actually a WordPerfect file.

    FF 57 50 43

We had a book called "Why do clocks run clockwise?" when I was a kid that answered this question and many others. It really helped develop curiosity in me.

http://www.amazon.com/Why-Clocks-Run-Clockwise-Imponderables...

This can also be seen as an expression of this fascinating "chirality" problem, whereby things, from living things to particles seem to prefer one direction over the other. Right, dextro-, or clock-wise: most sea-shells, most plants, DNA. most atoms but not neutrinos(!?)

Bolivia turns back the clock in bid to rediscover identity and 'southernness'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/bolivia-clocks-...

half the motion of the clock is right to left...the bottom half.

Movement of the Sun?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com