Assignment #3

1. Where is the 12-hour clock still used?

The 12-hour clock is still the dominant system in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, United States of America.

2. What does a.m and p.m. mean?

a.m. means ante meridiem (before noon)

p.m. means post meridiem (after noon)

3. Although using the 12-hour clock in speech is very common, using a.m. and p.m. is not common. What time expressions do we use to distinguish between, for example: the difference between 2am and 2pm?

We use a 24-hour clock.

For example: 2 Hours and 14 hours.

4. What are some of the problems with using a 12-hour clock?

People that have always known the 12 hour clock have usually problems to indicate the difference with noon and midnight.

5. What is the confusion about midnight and noon?

Since we use de latin term meridiem to difference noon and midnight isn't logical to use the 12 a.m. and 12 p.m.

6. What does rounding off mean, in informal speech? Give 3 examples.

It' common to round over the five minutes past or five minutes before.

example: 3:05 It's five past three or 3:45 It's a quarter to four

7. Name 5 advantages of the 24-hour clock.

-It is possible to differ between night and day.

-There is no ambiguity between noon or midnight.

-The duration of time intervals is easier to see in the 24-hour notation.

-The 24-hour notation does not require the suffix "a.m." or "p.m.", making it shorter.
-It has a chronological order.

8. Name 5 advantages of the 12-hour clock.
-The analog clock faces are divided in 12 hours.
-Restricting the hour numbers to the range from 1 to 12 can accommodate a preference for monosyllabic words.
-The use of 12 rather than 0 for the first hour of each period avoids using a leading zero.
-Clocks with a chime universally chime between hours 1 to 12.
-Sunrice and sunset are, roughly, centered around 6:00 in their respective halves of the day.

9. Describe the time and date notation for the following countries:
a. Australia: 12 hours o'clock
b. Canada: 12 hours o'clock
c. Ireland: 24 hours o'clock
d. South Africa: 24 hours o'clocks
e. United Kingdom: 24 hours o'clocks
f. United States: 12 hours o'cloks.

10. What is ISO 8601?
Defines unambiguous written all-numeric bigendian formats for dates.
Used to separate 1999-12-31 for December 31, 1999 and between hours, minutes and seconds.