{"id":820,"date":"2006-12-31T08:35:59","date_gmt":"2006-12-31T06:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=820"},"modified":"2006-12-28T15:37:36","modified_gmt":"2006-12-28T13:37:36","slug":"counter-clockwise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/?p=820","title":{"rendered":"counter-clockwise"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\">\n<applet code=\"Clock.class\" width=200 height=200 codebase=\"http:\/\/www.math.tu-berlin.de\/~hoffmann\/interactive\/\"><\/applet>\n<\/div>\n<p>In mathematics counter-clockwise rotations are considered &#8220;positive&#8221;. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>That <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0090852\/\">clockwise<\/a> rotations (rotations like the hands of a clock) are left to right is most likely due to the fact that a sundial (on the floor) in the northern hemisphere has a shadow that moves that way and the hands of the first clocks where simply made to mimick that movement.<br \/>\nIn mathematics on the other hand, a positive rotation is the other way around. This could be a consequence of the fact that the movements of the stars (again in the northern hemisphere) are rotating counter-clockwise around the polar star&#8211;making that the prefered positive direction for mesuring angles which in turn gives a prefered rotation direction. (this was not only the best but also the only explanation I could find. And since mathematics has been astronomy for the most part of its existence I think it is quite likely)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In mathematics counter-clockwise rotations are considered &#8220;positive&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.randform.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}