Question on anti-clockwise motion

All rotational motions in our society such as athletic races,horse,bicycle or ice skating races,turn against the clock. Also every supermarket leads its guests anticlockwise through the hall. Why ?

Regards
drdolittle

maybee, its the norms... we are used to it...

nope, it has something to do with the sundials again.

regards
drdolittle

The reason behind this is somewhat related to our body physiological structure. Our heart is a bit located on the left part of our body and the blood is distributed to different parts of the body by the pumping action of our heart. It moves from left to right. If we run anticlockwise in a race, it will facilitate our blood movement due to the centrifugal effect. I hope the above explanation can help you a bit!

MY OWN REASONING:
Imagine this....the track is circular and the audience are sitting outside this circle..

when the athletes run anticlockwise...the audience see them running from running from left to right.. this might be the reason ...


as we are used to scanning everything from left to right...like reading books , (except urdu which reads from right to left ) and also TV's CRT tube also scans from left to right..so we might not feel it comfortable to view someone running from right to left..


HISTORICAL REASON:

The runners race anticlockwise since before roman times. In all stadia the
races always went anticlockwise. Originally stadia were for horse car races
(see Ben Hur...) and the right hand, which usually keeps the sword,
had to be on the outside. There one has the largest freedom of movement.
Therefore in all stadia in the world races have always been anticlockwise,
and the tradition has been kept till today.

(For the same reason you will notice, if you travel in Europe,
that in middle age castles, circling stairs are always built in such a
way that the defenders can use the stairs with their right hand, the
sword keeping hand, on the *outside*.)