Maths via a Clock

I remember the hardest part about learning to read the time was not the minute hand part. The minute part was easy: depending on the age you were learning to do this, you used one of two techniques:
-         The multiplication table of 5 (me);
-         Or skip counting by 5 (my daughter).
For me, the hard part back then was reading the hour. Why? Say it’s 4:50. The hour hand is almost at 5; so you had to decide the hour not only by where the hour hand was. But when it was 5:10, you had to use the decide the hour by where the hour hand was. The minute value had to be used to decide which hour value to pick… which was confusing, and insane!

Now that whole confusion of the hour hand was rooted in the fact that clocks were mechanical devices and the hands moved bit by bit. In the present day, you could just read the digital display (phone, tablet, PC, laptop, or if anyone still has it, a digital watch) and avoid the whole problem.

But let’s say you liked the old clock way of reading time because:
-         You are just nostalgic for some of the old stuff; or
-         The clock has the advantage that it can be read from far; or
-         It might be awkward to look at your phone in the middle of a meeting/boring conversation, but reading the clock on the wall can be done discretely; or
-         You want your kid to learn at least the little maths that the clock would force on them (ha ha!).

If the last one is your reason, then you’ll love this digital clock that can force your kid to practice a lot more than the minimal maths of the old clock! The Albert Clock presents both the hour and minute as maths problems:
“In standard mode, the queries change every minute. They are completely random, so even the query for the hours change, even if the result stays the same.”


If you can’t read the time, kiddo, then no, it isn’t yet time to go down to play!

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarApril 17, 2017 at 3:46 PM

    I understand the confusion children face in reading time, when they feel they should be able to tell the time. Akshara (when she felt she was up to this challenge) would stare at the clock for a long time and come up with a time that would either be correct or a time that would surprise us. Surprise because she could not fathom the meaning of the hour hand position between one number and another. For her, 10:45 can only be 11:45! I think her logic was correct. The analog gear movement of yester centuries could only do that much. The inventers of that era had other worries than to think of the difficulties of a child. The child who can only understand the meaning of the nearest number and not the complexity of the logic "until 12 cross-over by the minute hand, previous number and not the nearest number holds for the hour hand". This nonsense is only for the preconceived mind of the adult. The child has an open and uncluttered mind. Sigh, it is in the process of being lost for every child. :-(

    I still believe that it was not the watches-gears but the child which won. Einstein said, "I am nothing special. I have immense curiosity about what are things. That's all". For a fabulous physicist he seemed to have been a child at heart with an open mind. That should be our outlook too.

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