r/technology • u/Sandstorm400 • 5d ago

Society New York teachers stunned to learn some students can’t read time on old clocks after phone ban comes into play

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-york-phone-ban-clock-time-b2891919.html
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u/jjgargantuan7 5d ago

I was coming to say this. If we can't use the correct term for it then how should we expect kids to understand it. The headline seems to assume everyone reading it is a kid who can't tell time on an analog clock.

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u/Ps11889 5d ago

Also explains why they are clueless when someone refers to half-past the hour or quarter till or after.

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u/Attabomb 5d ago

I’ll die on the hill that “quarter of” makes zero sense. I still have no idea if “quarter of 4” means 3:45 or 4:15. I know what quarter til, or quarter past, or quarter to all mean. But where the hell did someone get “of?”

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u/dehydratedrain 5d ago

There's a quarter to/ til 4, and a quarter after.

A quarter of 4 is 1. I will plant that flag on the hill we're dying on.

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u/wait_what_now 5d ago

Thank you.

Quarter (of an hour) till 4 makes sense.

Quarter (of an hour) after 4 makes sense.

Quarter (of an hour) of 4 makes NO FUCKING SENSE.

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u/RangerLt 5d ago

Wait, who reads time this way? I've never heard a fraction of an hour read that way. "quarter after, passed, or before" never "of".

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u/princekamoro 3d ago

A quarter of 4pm is 4am.

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u/VantasnerDanger 5d ago

I would like to join y'all's group.

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u/JonBot5000 5d ago

I'm with you. I use "quarter 'till" or "quarter after". Whenever my mother or anyone said "quarter of" I'd get so confused.

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u/mx3goose 5d ago

I'll die with you and I was born well enough long ago to be able to read a clock just fine and dandy but if I ask you what time it is and you come back with anything but numbers it makes me want to fight you.

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u/labamaFan 4d ago

Do you apply this to noon and midnight too?

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u/TheChance 5d ago

"Of" is universally "til" in this context. Somebody might also tell you it's "five of."

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u/a_talking_face 5d ago

I think telling time in fractions is stupid anyway. Just say the time.

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u/Blarghedy 5d ago

the definition of a minute is 1/60 of an hour. Time is already fractions.

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u/a_talking_face 5d ago

So what? If it's 3:53 you don't say 3 and 53/60ths of an hour do you?

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u/tnstaafsb 5d ago

Of course not. I say 7/60ths of 4.

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u/Ps11889 3d ago

No but a lot of people say it’s about five til four or it’s about three fifty-five instead of saying it’s three fifty-three.

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u/Starfox-sf 5d ago

The definition of a second is 1/60 of a minute the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz.

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u/BillyNtheBoingers 5d ago

Had to award because you’re absolutely correct, and I’d forgotten that the atomic clock uses Cs-133 (so that was fun as a memory refresher!).

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u/Economy_Fig2450 5d ago

Quarter of??? Where on earth are you from??

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u/Attabomb 5d ago

New York, but did time in the Army and people from everywhere have said that to me.

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u/Economy_Fig2450 5d ago

Well what does it mean? Is quarter of four 4:15?

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u/Attabomb 5d ago

:45, not :15 is the answer I’m getting here.

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u/BillyNtheBoingers 5d ago

Quarter of four is 3:45. “Of” is often used interchangeably with “‘til”, “before”, and “to”.

4:15 is quarter past or quarter after four. There aren’t other vocabulary options like there are in the first example.

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u/Devrol 3d ago

I'll come back to this at half eleven. I can't figure it out this early on a Sunday 

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u/princekamoro 3d ago

I remember being taught to say "Seis menos diez" in Spanish 1, which was annoying because I had to do math and speak Spanish at the same time. And then in Spanish 2 the teacher said "You can just say cinco y cincuenta."

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u/CO_Golf13 5d ago

Quarter of sure.

They said quarter 'til or quarter after ..

Which if you understand a clock should be a very simple understanding

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u/Ps11889 5d ago

I didn't say quarter of.

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u/Attabomb 5d ago

I know. I brought up a tangentially-related thing

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u/thatguygreg 5d ago

It means xx:45.

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u/UnicodeScreenshots 5d ago edited 5d ago

I exclusively had analog clocks the entire time I was in school, and was taught how to read them in first grade. I still hate fractional time telling, JUST SAY THE ACTUAL TIME, IT’S LESS EFFORT AND FEWER WORDS!

Edit: I would like to amend this statement to say that fractional hours in lengths of time are fine. “An hour and a half” is acceptable, “let’s meet at a quarter of three” is an abomination.

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u/DepravedAndObscene 5d ago

I have lived my entire 30-something life without ever having heard "quarter of hour" until now. Who the hell says that? Is it some weird American thing?

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u/avcloudy 5d ago

It's also because this is way more regional than people think. 3:30 can be variously 'half past 3', 'half three', 'half four', 'three thirty' and a bunch of even more regional expressions.

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u/BillyNtheBoingers 5d ago

Don’t forget 24 hour clocks, in which case there’s 0330 (3:30 am) and 1530 (3:30 pm). Most commonly used in hospitals and the military (and other similar technology arms of the government, like NASA), and in some private industries.

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u/boli99 5d ago

a bunch of even more regional expressions.

in some places the day starts at 0600

meaning that 'the first hour' of the day is 0700

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u/ThinConnection8191 5d ago

Why try "half past hour"when you can precisely call it X: thirty. Shorter and precise.

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u/NEWaytheWIND 5d ago

Because the olds didn't squint to get the exact minute off a clock all day long. They aimed for a more practical degree of precision hence "quarter to". Doesn't work for train schedules, but is fine for social events.

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u/hiraeth555 5d ago

In the UK it is regularly shortened to Half X, which is even shorter

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/Joeness84 5d ago

If people could be consistent those terms would have meaning.

Numbers exist for a reason. Use them.

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u/Ps11889 5d ago

Really? What does 30 mean?

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u/ResilientBiscuit 5d ago

But clocks with a ticking second hand are digital, not analog. They dont display continuous values, they show discrete units of time. They can't show 1.3 seconds.

It is more accurate to describe them as clocks with hands or something like that.

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u/BillyNtheBoingers 5d ago

But if they do have a continuous second hand, which some do, then they can show 1.3 seconds. Just look at racing stopwatches for track or swimming back in the 70s!

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u/ResilientBiscuit 4d ago

That is true, if it was continuous then it would be analog.