   'Clockwise' is defined as the direction that the hands on a clock turn. But why do clock hands turn this way? Many things turn in the opposite direction ... baseball players run the bases counterclockwise, horses race counterclockwise around the track, and jar lids unscrew counterclockwise. Why do clocks run clockwise?  The reason might be quite simple. Our original clocks were sundials. In the northern hemisphere, where sundials were first used extensively, the shadow on a sundial moves around its face in a clockwise direction, as the sun moves across the sky. Mechanical clocks with hands were originally built to imitate the path of a sundial shadow. |