Ten times a day, a digital clock will display numbers that are consecutive from low to high.
- 12:34 (am/pm)
- 1:23 (am/pm)
- 2:34 (am/pm)
- 3:45 (am/pm)
- 4:56 (am/pm)
If you count army time, then you can include:
- 23:45
- 0:12
And if you count going down:
- 6:54 (am/pm)
- 5:43 (am/pm)
- 4:32 (am/pm)
- 3:21 (am/pm)
- 2:10 (am/pm)
(this post was an idea my mom brought up in conversation on Mother’s Day, thanks mom!)
Whenever I see a digital clock displaying 12:34 or 1:23 or 2:34 or 3:45 etc. I begin to wonder if there is something wrong with me. Why? Because the only time I look at a digital readout of the time when it is 12:34 or 1:23 or 2:34 or 3:45 etc! The only other time that drives me completely batty is 11:11 … I almost ALWAYS look at the clock at 11:11 … What could that mean!?
My favourite radio station growing up was 1242 on the AM band. Whenever I saw the time was 12:42, I felt the compulsion to sing their callsign jingle.
heh. did you manage to catch the 01:02::03 04/05/06 this year?
Ruben, you make a very good point. I didn’t even make that connection. But yes, I catch 01:02:03 04/05/06 this year. I even made a blog post about it: https://www.spudart.org/blogs/randomthoughts_comments/3550_0_3_15_C/
I thought I was the only one to have that “obsession” with consecutive numbers. The other day I was coming to work and in the train station it was about 12:33 so I waited there, looking at the digital clock, just to have the pleasure of seeing it arrive at 12:34:56… I must seek professional help…
That’s funny. I’ve noticed 12:34 for most of my life. I associate it with it being a good day. It reminds me that the day is protected from being a bad day.
I like that idea, Brian.
“Army time”? You mean the other branches of the military don’t use the same time format?? It’s called Military Time. Navy, Air Force, and Marines use the same time format as well. Not just limited to Army. SMH
Thanks for the correction, Dustin!
Okay so I’m an undergrad pure mathematics major and I have your answer. 🙂
There are 4 slots on a clock that measure only minutes and hours (ie. 00:00).
In each of the slots there are 10 digits that are allowed to be in each slot, (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6, 7, 8, and 9), right? 🙂 So because there are 10 digits and 4 slots, and repetitions are OBVIOUSLY allowed, hence speculations about 11:11am and 11:11pm we have
10 * 10 * 10 * 10…that’s 10,000!
At least…..that’s what you would believe at FIRST! But! It’s not that simple….
You have to realize, the first digit can only be 0 or 1…where have you EVER seen 99:00 o’ clock? Literally never! lol
So instead of 10 for the first one we only have 2.
Now for the second digit, any digit 0-9 is allowed. So we still have 10 possibilities there.
For the third one, here’s where things get INTERESTING, you only have 0-5, because there are only 60 minutes in an hour and the 2nd digit is the one to change every hour, you will never see 12:60am/pm on a clock, but you can see 12:59am/pm…So that’s 5 possible digits that can be placed in that slot!
For the fourth one we have 0-9 for our possibilities again, so that’s 10 possibile digits.
So our REAL answer is: 2*10*5*10 ! 🙂
Now…. if we are adding the fact that am and pm are added into the mix, we should probably multiply by two, because 11:11am is not the same as 11:11pm, but we’re not considering am and pm, just different combinations of numbers!
Wow, all your work is amazing!