bookofjoe

ACCENT ORACLE

"Do you have an accent when speaking English? I bet I can guess it in 30 seconds or less."

Speak here.

Measure Twice, Cut Onc

Don't you just hate when that happens?

Fibonacci Clock

Wrote Clive Thompson:

In the Fibonacci sequence you start with 1 plus 1 and keep going by adding the previous two numbers together to get the next.

So the first five numbers are 1, 1, 2, 3, and 5.

The hardware hacker Philippe Chrétien used these to create this gorgeous clock.

How does it work?

As he writes …

The screen of the clock is made up of five squares whose side lengths match the first five Fibonacci numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3 and 5.

The hours are displayed using red and the minutes using green.

When a square is used to display both the hours and minutes it turns blue.

White squares are ignored.

To tell time on the Fibonacci clock you need to do some math.

• To read the hour, simply add up the corresponding values of the red and blue squares.

• To read the minutes, do the same with the green and blue squares.

The minutes are displayed in 5-minute increments (0 to 12) so you have to multiply your result by 5 to get the actual number.

For example …

So not exactly the easiest clock to use but pretty cool-looking!

Kind of a Mondrian thing going on here, right?

You can buy one fully assembled from Chrétien, or buy the components from him to assemble yourself; or just follow his guide and DIY it. (Another version by another hacker here.)

(BTW, I realize that some people begin the Fibonacci sequences not with 1 but with 0. When I wrote above that "you start with 1 plus 1" it was because that's how this clock creator organized his sequence; both formats are commonly used.)