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Ben Ford Clock 3 Pages

The paper explores the mathematical problem of whether the hands of a clock can be permuted to represent valid times, starting with a two-hand clock and extending to a three-hand clock. It discusses the conditions under which such permutations yield valid clock positions and presents graphical methods to visualize the solutions. The authors identify a total of 143 solutions for the two-hand clock, with 132 being non-trivial, and outline the complexity introduced by the third hand in a three-hand clock scenario.

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Lawrence Lim Ah Kow
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2 views3 pages

Ben Ford Clock 3 Pages

The paper explores the mathematical problem of whether the hands of a clock can be permuted to represent valid times, starting with a two-hand clock and extending to a three-hand clock. It discusses the conditions under which such permutations yield valid clock positions and presents graphical methods to visualize the solutions. The authors identify a total of 143 solutions for the two-hand clock, with 132 being non-trivial, and outline the complexity introduced by the third hand in a three-hand clock scenario.

Uploaded by

Lawrence Lim Ah Kow
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Confusing Clocks

Ben Ford
Case Western Reserve University
Cleveland, OH 44106
[email protected]

Cory Franzmeier
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
[email protected]

Richard Gayle
Department of Science and Mathematics
Montana State University — Northern
Havre, MT 59501
[email protected]

This paper had its genesis in the early 1980’s, when the third author was teaching at
a community college in California and was asked a version of the following question by a
student:

Given a standard analog (two-hand) clock, are there times when the two hands
could be interchanged to obtain another valid time (besides the obvious times
when the two hands are at the same position?

It was not hard to work out an answer to the question (see below), but the problem
suggests many similar (and harder) questions. The question sat for years until the first
author suggested it to one of his undergraduate students, the second author.
The most obvious of these questions regards a three-hand clock: Given a standard three-
hand clock (with hour, minute, and second hands), are there times when the hands could
be permuted in some way to obtain another valid time? Again, overlapping hands provide
trivial solutions. We examine this question in the second section; in the last section we
consider imperfect clocks.
The two-hand problem also appears in [1, 2, 3, 4], with [3] giving the solution we give,
[2, 4] giving algebraic solutions, and [1] giving hints towards the solution below.

The Two-Hand Clock


To start off, let us examine the case of a two-hand, perfectly accurate, twelve hour clock.
As an example, take the time 2:00, when the hour hand points at 2 o’clock and the minute
hand points at the 12 o’clock position. Permuting the hands, we do not get a valid clock
position, since the hour hand pointing directly at 12 forces the minute hand to also point to
12. We notice that the position of the hour hand determines the position of the minute hand
Ford, Franzmeier, Gayle 2
PSfrag
m
60

50

40

30

20

10

h
0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 1: The graph of m(h)

— so we can write the minute hand position as a function of the hour hand position. If we
use the 60-minute scale on the clock face (so we measure the position of each hand as a real
number in the interval [0, 60) — this is the usual scale for the minute hand, but not for the
hour hand), and use h to represent the hour hand and m(h) the minute hand, we have:

m(h) ≡ 12h (mod 60)


= 12h − 60[h/5],
where [x] means the greatest integer less than or equal to x. We will often indicate hand
positions as ordered pairs (x, y), where x is the position of the hour hand and y the minute
hand.
To answer the original question, we must find values of h for which (m(h), h) is a valid
clock position — i.e., for which h = m(m(h)). The last equation can be solved algebraically;
this was done in [4], which includes an exhaustive list of all solutions. However, there is a
nice way to “see” the answer (which appears in [3]): The point (a, b) in the plane represents
one of the hand positions we are looking for if and only if (a, b) and (b, a) are both on the
graph of the function m(h), which has [0, 60) for its domain and whose graph is shown in
Figure .
The point (b, a) is on this graph if and only if (a, b) is on the graph (m(h), h), which is
the reflection about the line m = h of the graph above. Overlaying the two graphs, we have
the graph shown in Figure , and the intersections are precisely the points we are looking for.
There are 143 of them (the apparent intersection at (60, 60) is the same as the one at (0, 0));
as mentioned above, they are catalogued in [4]. The 11 intersections which lie on the line
m = h are the trivial solutions where the hands are at the same position, so there are 132
non-trivial solutions.

Before discussing the three-hand clock, we mention one property of the greatest integer
Ford, Franzmeier, Gayle 3
PSfrag
m
60

50

40

30

20

10

h
0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Figure 2: m(h) and its reflection about the line m = h

function which we use frequently: If r is a real number and a an integer, then [r + a] = [r]+ a

Three-Hand Clocks
Next consider a perfectly accurate three-hand clock. Our method of graphical intersections
may not be so useful in the three-hand case. In this case the lines representing the time
are of course in three dimensions and it is not necessarily true that non-parallel lines will
intersect.
As with the minute hand, the position h of the hour hand determines the position of the
second-hand on our clock, via the function

s(h) ≡ 720h (mod 60)


= 720h − 60[12h].

With the additional hand on the clock come additional possible permutations of the hands.
We represent hand positions as ordered triples (x, y, z), with z the position of the second-
hand. There are six possible permutations of the hands:

1. (h, m(h), s(h));

2. (m(h), h, s(h));

3. (h, s(h), m(h));

4. (s(h), m(h), h);

5. (s(h), h, m(h)); and

6. (m(h), s(h), h).

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