Learn to tell the time on an analogue clock: read it, set it, or match clocks to times, from the hour to every minute.
What time is it?
Tap a clock, then the time that matches it.
Read: look at the short and long hands and pick the time. You can also press 1, 2 or 3. Set: drag the face to turn the chosen hand, or use the four buttons, then press Check. Arrow keys also turn the chosen hand when the clock has focus. Match: tap a clock, then its time. Show me puts a faint copy of the right hands on the clock.
The long hand turns once an hour, 6 degrees a minute. The short hand turns once in twelve hours, 30 degrees an hour. It does not jump from one number to the next: it moves half a degree every minute, so at half past three it sits half way between the 3 and the 4, and at quarter to four it is nearly at the 4.
The levels set which times come up: on the hour, half hours, quarter hours, every five minutes, or every minute. In Set, a hand you drag snaps to a time the level allows. In Read, the two wrong choices are the slips a child makes, such as the hands swapped over (3:20 read as 4:15), the hour one out, or the minutes of a different time.
Nothing is timed and nothing is taken away. A run counts clocks done first time, with no help, and your longest run for each level is kept on your device.
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Pick a mode, then how exact you want the times to be: On the hour, Half hours, Quarter hours, Five minutes or Every minute. The clock has a ring in four colours, one for each quarter of the face, with the numbers 1 to 12 inside. The short hand is amber and the long hand is sky blue.
Read. Look at the clock and pick the time from three big buttons. You can also press 1, 2 or 3. The page tells you what the right answer was, in numbers and in words (“Yes! 3:45 is quarter to four.”). A wrong pick shows the right time and waits; press Next clock when you are ready. Nothing is taken away. The two wrong choices are the slips a child often makes: the two hands swapped over (so a clock at 3:20 might be offered as 4:15), the hour one out, or the minutes of a different time.
Set. The page asks for a time, for example “Set the clock to 4:15 (quarter past four)”. Choose the Long hand or the Short hand, then drag or tap on the clock face to turn it, or use the four buttons to move a hand back or on. The hand snaps to a time the level allows. Press Check. If it is not right yet you get a kind hint about which hand to look at (“The short hand is right. Now move the long hand: it should point at the 3.”), and you can try as often as you like. Show me puts a faint dashed copy of the right hands on the clock; if you use it, the count of clocks in a row starts again.
Match. Four clocks on the left, four times on the right. Tap a clock and then the time it shows. A right pair turns green with a tick and its own coloured border; a wrong one is just undone. New clocks plays again, and Another clock in Read and Set swaps the current clock for a new one.
In Read and Set the page keeps a count of In a row: clocks done first time, with no help. A wrong answer starts the count again, quietly. Your Best run for each level is kept on your device.
The controls are real buttons and a menu, so they all work with Tab. In Set, Tab to the clock face and use the arrow keys to turn the chosen hand, then press Enter or Space to check. A screen reader hears a description of the hands (“The short hour hand is nearly at the 4. The long minute hand is on the 9.”) and the same messages as everyone else.
The long hand points at the minute times 6 degrees. The short hand points at the hour times 30 degrees plus half a degree for every minute. The tests check both hands for all 720 times of a 12 hour clock against a separate model (minutes since 12 o’clock) and against the textbook formula for the angle between the hands, |30h - 5.5m|. They also check that the hands only meet at 12:00 among whole minutes, and that at half past the short hand sits exactly half way between two numbers.
The same formulas run backwards when you drag a hand. The angle of your finger, seen from the centre of the clock, becomes a minute (snapped to the nearest time the level allows, measured round the dial, so a hand dropped just before 12 reads 0 and not 60) or an hour (allowing for the drift, so a short hand placed where it belongs for 3:45 reads as 3). The tests turn every hand position back into the time it came from at every level.
The face is drawn from numbers too: 60 tick marks with a longer one every fifth minute, 12 numbers on a circle, and four curved bands for the coloured ring. The tests check where each one sits.
Every time has words, for example “five past three”, “quarter to four”, “twenty-five to four” and “seven minutes past three”. The tests check a full table of them and that all 720 times give different, complete words.
The choices. The three buttons in Read are always three different times that all suit the level (a quarter-hour level never offers 3:07). The swapped-hands slip is always one of the wrong choices when it is a valid time at that level, and the right answer lands in each button about equally often.
Match. Each game has four different times and the time cards are never in the same order as the clocks. The tests play thousands of games with random pairing and check that they always finish, that a right pair is never undone, and that the count of misses only goes up.
Nothing is uploaded and there is no account. The longest run for each level (a whole number from 1 to 999, five numbers at most) is saved in your browser’s local storage. When it is read back, only the five known levels are accepted and only whole numbers in range.
Everything runs locally in your browser.
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