Why do the hands of the clock turn clockwise from left to right?

The clockwise rotation of clock hands originated from the use of sundials before the invention of clocks. In the northern hemisphere, the shadow of the sun moves clockwise, and the inventor of the clock imitated the natural movement of the sun, thus designing the rotation direction of the clock hands.

The rotation of the pointer shadow on the sundial is like this: in the morning, the sun rises in the east and the shadow faces the west. As the sun rises, the shadow moves slowly to the north. At noon, the shadow points to the north.

Then, as the sun turns slowly, the shadow gradually faces east. From west to north, then from north to east, the shadow just turns from left to right. As the spiritual successor of the sundial, it is not surprising that the clock chooses the same rotation direction.

Composition of sundials

A sundial usually consists of a copper pointer and a stone disk. The copper pointer is called "pointer", which passes through the center of the disk vertically and acts as a neutral rod in the standard watch. Therefore, the needle is also called "table"; The stone plate is called "tile surface" and placed on the stone platform, with the south high and the north low, so that the tile surface is parallel to the equator of the celestial sphere. In this way, the upper end of the magnetic needle points to the north celestial pole and the lower end points to the south celestial pole.

There are scales on both sides of the coffin. Molecules, Ugliness, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu and Hai have twelve hours, and each hour is divided into "the beginning of the time" and "the right time", and a day is exactly 24 hours. Most sundials show apparent solar time, and the design of some of them has been changed to show standard time or daylight saving time.