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The idea of Designer Jorn Mols, was to find an elegant way, to show that Color can be a Way to Show Time. So he developed the ColorWatch (http://www.colorwatch.info). I made it into a JavaScript Active Desktop background, which is on the site to download. And I worked on a ScreenSaver showing the ColorWatch.
But today, I had some time and started to implement the idea in PHP, to learn a bit. Once the basic functionality was there, I wondered how I could show both the Hour and the Minutes. It was easy to change the script. I just drew another circle around the clock in the color of the minutes!
Now here are these two colors for the current time:
Adding the ColorScale makes it clear, what the colors mean. When you search for the place on the inside of the circe, where the surface seems to break, this is the current hour. Seek where the outer circle touches the ColorScale and find the point, where the surface seems to open up. This is the current number of minutes in this current hour.
With a few hands, it is much clearer. But, they are just there to help you understand. In principle one could do without.
Adding the numbers to the scale makes it a colorfull modern clock.
But without the hands you can now probably read the time in colors yourself with some attention.
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For teaching children this can be a fun way to learn both numbers and colors. Time can become more that just a figure on your watch, I can be a full experience of the Color of Time.
Teacher:Hello, can you tell me what time it is now?
Child:It is about red and blue minutes. When will we have lunch?
Teacher:Just wait till it is orange hours and red minutes, can you tell me in numbers how late that is?
Child:That must be one o'clock! But when it is olive green, we go home.
I hope you liked the demonstration!
Yours friendly,
Marc Kroeks, 11th February 2010.
©2010 Copyright Marc Kroeks.