Imo anyone using 12:XX am for midnight for the sake of “symmetry” with 12:XX pm or whatever is adding pointless complications on top of the already pointless am/pm system. Midnight has no reason to not be 00:XX am in that system
It ain’t about symmetry or pointless complications. It’s about how many numbers can you get on a watch face and have it be easily legible. Yes, I know there are digital watches these days. But some people don’t like them and some of us need those analog faces. As an old medic, digital watches absolutely suck at timing things like BP or respiration’s. Neither me or my patient had time for that digital watch to zero so I could get a BP in 15 seconds. Ten’s of thousands of EMS people and nurses in general are wearing 12 our analog watches around the world right now.
Now my run reports were all done n 24 hour time because the little boxes on those paper run reports were tiny and often filled out in a hurry. So 24 hour time was more legible and clear to anyone reading the report.
Besides, can you not look out a window to see if the sun is up or not? That will tell you all you need to know to understand how to use 12 hour time.
Its not about understanding it. Its about using it. I cannot tell you the number of times I had set an alarm 12 hours off before switching to 24 hour time. After I switched it never happened again.
Besides 24 is divisible by 12 so you can just double up the numbers on an analog clock. I have an analog watch with 24 hour face that looks similar to this:
Idk, I get your arguments but I’ve seen quite a lot of beautiful watch faces with small 24 hours numbers under the 12 hours one. Of course it works best with the big ones, but that seems to be in fashion these days.
I have no inherent issues with using or understanding 12 hours time, I just think it is actually adding complexity to something that is already pretty much perfect, for reasons that are mostly cultural nowadays (you’ve gotta admit that your point about hospital workers, while very valid, is still kinda isolated. Plus when I was wearing my watch with a 12 hours face daily I just did the x2 multiplication in my head).
Also there’s a reason basically all militaries use 24 hours, and I don’t think it’s because they think highly of their average soldier’s intellect.
Besides, can you not look out a window to see if the sun is up or not? That will tell you all you need to know to understand how to use 12 hour time.
That reminds me how after not sleeping for 3 days (I studied for an exam) I fell asleep randomly on my bed (more like passed out) and woke up to a low sun, the analog clock showing like 7:00, and I could not tell whether the sun was rising or setting.
(As a side note: I didn’t have a clue whether my window went out to the west, east, north, etc, and I was way too groggy to even think like that. It was more the color of the light in the room that was ambivalent. Obviously I checked my phone rather quickly and didn’t need to figure out the position of the sun to understand whether it was morning or evening)
Just remember that m is midday, when the sun it high in the sky. Anything with an a is before that moment, everything with a p is after that. It’s not that hard. Now, making heads or tails of thumbs, feet and miles. That’s a head scratcher.
I’m not saying it’s hard, and we got the explanation too. It’s about what feels or seems off. It’s technically correct, I know, but the first reaction of the class was confusion and a lack of intuitive understanding. Mostly it is using 12 instead of 0.
It seems off if you look at it from a purely numerical point of view. If you tackle it from a geometric POV and the face of a clock, it makes sense. That time representation was meant to be cyclical, not lineal. Time is a circle, not a vector.
I see what you mean and where you’re coming from, and I also realize there are historical reasons for 12 hours, there’s a reason it’s called "p"m and "a"m and so on. Still, it does not feel intuitive to jump from 11:59 am to 12:00 pm, go on to 12:15 pm, and end up at 1:00 pm again. It feels like an either or thing. Either you go to 12:00 am after 11:59 am, or you go to 0:00 pm. I understand why it is pm and why it is 12, I am just saying, it feels off to me (and, as mentioned above, the whole class of German students). I absolutely understand that it feels much more natural and less counterintuitive if you have grown up with this system.
For an analog clock the reason for 12 hour time is that twelve divides evenly into 60 and 24 does not. Get rid of the whole 60 min/hour and 60 sec/min that make dividing a clock dial into 60 segments extremely useful and then we can talk about why there are twelve hours on it.
Reminds me of the collective confusion in english class when they taught us that 12:15 am is in the night and 12:15 pm is at lunchtime.
Imo anyone using 12:XX am for midnight for the sake of “symmetry” with 12:XX pm or whatever is adding pointless complications on top of the already pointless am/pm system. Midnight has no reason to not be 00:XX am in that system
It ain’t about symmetry or pointless complications. It’s about how many numbers can you get on a watch face and have it be easily legible. Yes, I know there are digital watches these days. But some people don’t like them and some of us need those analog faces. As an old medic, digital watches absolutely suck at timing things like BP or respiration’s. Neither me or my patient had time for that digital watch to zero so I could get a BP in 15 seconds. Ten’s of thousands of EMS people and nurses in general are wearing 12 our analog watches around the world right now.
Now my run reports were all done n 24 hour time because the little boxes on those paper run reports were tiny and often filled out in a hurry. So 24 hour time was more legible and clear to anyone reading the report.
Besides, can you not look out a window to see if the sun is up or not? That will tell you all you need to know to understand how to use 12 hour time.
Its not about understanding it. Its about using it. I cannot tell you the number of times I had set an alarm 12 hours off before switching to 24 hour time. After I switched it never happened again.
Besides 24 is divisible by 12 so you can just double up the numbers on an analog clock. I have an analog watch with 24 hour face that looks similar to this:
Idk, I get your arguments but I’ve seen quite a lot of beautiful watch faces with small 24 hours numbers under the 12 hours one. Of course it works best with the big ones, but that seems to be in fashion these days.
I have no inherent issues with using or understanding 12 hours time, I just think it is actually adding complexity to something that is already pretty much perfect, for reasons that are mostly cultural nowadays (you’ve gotta admit that your point about hospital workers, while very valid, is still kinda isolated. Plus when I was wearing my watch with a 12 hours face daily I just did the x2 multiplication in my head).
Also there’s a reason basically all militaries use 24 hours, and I don’t think it’s because they think highly of their average soldier’s intellect.
That reminds me how after not sleeping for 3 days (I studied for an exam) I fell asleep randomly on my bed (more like passed out) and woke up to a low sun, the analog clock showing like 7:00, and I could not tell whether the sun was rising or setting.
(As a side note: I didn’t have a clue whether my window went out to the west, east, north, etc, and I was way too groggy to even think like that. It was more the color of the light in the room that was ambivalent. Obviously I checked my phone rather quickly and didn’t need to figure out the position of the sun to understand whether it was morning or evening)
Just remember that m is midday, when the sun it high in the sky. Anything with an a is before that moment, everything with a p is after that. It’s not that hard. Now, making heads or tails of thumbs, feet and miles. That’s a head scratcher.
I’m not saying it’s hard, and we got the explanation too. It’s about what feels or seems off. It’s technically correct, I know, but the first reaction of the class was confusion and a lack of intuitive understanding. Mostly it is using 12 instead of 0.
It seems off if you look at it from a purely numerical point of view. If you tackle it from a geometric POV and the face of a clock, it makes sense. That time representation was meant to be cyclical, not lineal. Time is a circle, not a vector.
I see what you mean and where you’re coming from, and I also realize there are historical reasons for 12 hours, there’s a reason it’s called "p"m and "a"m and so on. Still, it does not feel intuitive to jump from 11:59 am to 12:00 pm, go on to 12:15 pm, and end up at 1:00 pm again. It feels like an either or thing. Either you go to 12:00 am after 11:59 am, or you go to 0:00 pm. I understand why it is pm and why it is 12, I am just saying, it feels off to me (and, as mentioned above, the whole class of German students). I absolutely understand that it feels much more natural and less counterintuitive if you have grown up with this system.
For an analog clock the reason for 12 hour time is that twelve divides evenly into 60 and 24 does not. Get rid of the whole 60 min/hour and 60 sec/min that make dividing a clock dial into 60 segments extremely useful and then we can talk about why there are twelve hours on it.