Reconstructing the clock face

In my last blog post I wrote about why the clock face had made me queasy as a child and how I often wondered why the minutes couldn't be separated out from the hours instead of having to share the digits of the clock face. It would have been satisfying if we'd had the chance to design our own clock faces at school, perhaps as an art project or just for fun. Our individual clocks would have told our teachers a lot about how we saw time and where our blocks to understanding were. We might also have learnt a bit more about time in the process of our explorations.

I recently had fun looking at alternative clock faces http://www.boredpanda.com/cool-and-creative-clocks/ and drew a few of my own. I succeeded in discovering just about the most impenetrable way of telling the time - by measuring the angle between the hour and the minute hand - not terribly practical because 180 degrees could be six o/clock or half past twelve!

After a bit more messing around I settled on a design that seem to meet my objectives (at least I hope it would have been pleasing to my 13 year old self):

Quarter to six

• The clock face doesn't have hands so no confusion over which is the minute or the hour hand
• It's possible to trace the progress of the hours as the time is represented a solid line - no hands floating in space
• The clock face has no numbers, apart from showing the most recent hour - so no clutter and confusion.
• The minutes are represented as solid fractions which are displayed inside the 'hour' line. Half past, quarter past, quarter to are easy to see at a glance but to avoid confusion, subtle delineation between the five minute intervals can be added making it possible to read five past, 10 past, 20 past and 25 etc. 
  
• Minutes and hours are shown in different colours