• affiliate@lemmy.world
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    8 hours ago

    i don’t ever use bottle caps or cars. but in the case of screws (and bottle caps), the choice to make them tighten clockwise and loosen counter clockwise is entirely arbitrary.

    my main point is that i think it’s confusing that clockwise is negatively oriented and counterclockwise is positively oriented (in the mathematical sense). and the mathematical definition of orientation is ultimately dependent on trigonometry. and it just feels wrong that clocks are negatively oriented.

    You’re the person people have to say “no, your other left” a lot to, aren’t ya?

    no.

    • blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      I’m not sure why you’re saying its clocks that are wrong rather than the other stuff. Currently we have x = r cos(𝜃) and y = r sin(𝜃), and that’s what makes anti-clockwise rotations mathematically natural. But if we instead just used x = r sin(𝜃) and y = r cos(𝜃) then clockwise would be the natural positive rotation. And in that case, the unit circle would start at the top and go around clockwise… like we do for compass bearing (and clocks of course). So perhaps that would be better than changing what clocks do.