# Alarm Clock 9 minutes... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [May 2, 2000, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328 "2000-05-02T02:21:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![hfd28](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ee7513/32.png) [@hfd28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hfd28)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2000, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/1 "2000-05-02T02:21:32Z")
I have an old alarm clock that has a 10 minute snooze. It’s an older digital panasonic, Model number RC-6130. My new alarm clock has a 9 minute snooze however. Personally, I prefer the 10 minute snooze - I like my extra time asleep 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2000, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/2 "2000-05-02T08:12:58Z")
Cecil’s column: [Why does the alarm clock snooze button give you nine extra minutes, not ten? (26-Nov-1999)](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/991126.html) hfd28, you may be interested in reading these discussions of the same column. There seems to be a wide variety of possible snooze times. Who would have thought that alarm clocks could be such a hot topic? 'Snooze Only When Man Bites Alarm Clock [Snooze Time](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=2266) ---
**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2000, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/3 "2000-05-02T08:14:15Z")
Well, that will teach me to use the preview feature. ['Snooze Only When Man Bites Alarm Clock](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=2234) ---
**Author:** ![ttaylor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c77e96/32.png) [@ttaylor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ttaylor)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2000, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/4 "2000-05-04T04:49:38Z")
alarm clocks have nine minutes because they figure it takes roughly one minute to wake and hit snooze, then it goes off nine minutes later so in essence you have stayed in bed ten minutes longer than planned. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2000, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/5 "2000-05-05T17:04:45Z")
Yeah, but my current alarm clock has a seven minute snooze. How’s that for weird? ---
**Author:** ![ttaylor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c77e96/32.png) [@ttaylor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ttaylor)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2000, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/6 "2000-05-06T00:49:14Z")
Hell, i don’t know , maybe all companies have their own way of going things and alarm time settings are just one of them. There is no telling. ---
**Author:** ![jamshid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecd19e/32.png) [@jamshid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jamshid)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2000, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/7 "2000-06-21T20:59:47Z")
The reason has to do with logic gate design (and the laziness of engineers, I suppose). Cecil’s comment, “(8) On a digital clock, nine is the greatest interval obtainable by advancing some sort of “snooze counter” on the ones column. But why mess with the ones column? Why not put the snooze counter on the tens column and advance that by one?” is the closest he comes to the real reason. Designing in the logic circuitry for the “tens column” requires a separate set of gates; i.e., two sets, rather than one. You would need a set of gates that checked the “ones column” to see how many cycles had been passed; once the appropriate number of cycles had passed, the counter in the “tens column” would advance one, and the snooze alarm would go off. So, chalk it up to corporate profiteering. It’s more expensive to add the logic circuitry for a ten-minute snooze. As for me, I have a four-minute snooze alarm. It is difficult, but not impossible, to find a digital alarm clock with a snooze cycle of greater than 9 minutes, though; my college roommate had a fancy clock with a 15-minute interval. I think it was made by GE, but I wouldn’t swear to it. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Spaulding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Capt.Spaulding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Spaulding)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2000, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/8 "2000-06-22T17:58:25Z")
Get this: I bought a cheapo, battery operated digital alarm clock while on vacation a month ago. The first snooze cycle is 8 minutes; if you hit the snooze button, the next cycle is 4 minutes; the next is 2 mins., then 1 - where it stays unless you turn the alarm off and reset it. I’ve got to admit, though - the hateful, bastard-thing works like a charm. ---
**Author:** ![charizard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charizard/32/4166_2.png) [@charizard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/charizard)\ **Post date:** [June 22, 2000, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/9 "2000-06-22T18:36:56Z")
I have an alarm clock (late-model GE, I think), that has 3 selectable snooze delays - 5-minute, 10-minute and (!) 20-minute. Now, how can you possibly count 20 extra minutes of sleeping as a “snooze”? Why would they skip all the way to 20 minutes, while omitting the much more intuitive and useful 15-minute mark? Caused me a lot of grief one morning, after my young kids had played with the clock and changed it to the 20-minute setting. ---
**Author:** ![Gigapede](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9dc877/32.png) [@Gigapede](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gigapede)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2000, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/10 "2000-07-15T00:37:37Z")
I believe it’s psychological. If your alarm goes off and you have it’s 7:30 then you blearily hit snooze, if it goes off and it’s 7:29 or 7:39, you say, ‘Holy smoke!’ and get up, fall out of bed, drag a comb across your head. If you have to think about the time, you wake up more. I was told this by an enchanted monkey that I trust implicitly. ---
**Author:** ![Origato](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b2d939/32.png) [@Origato](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Origato)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2000, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/11 "2000-07-15T02:31:26Z")
It is software related, undoubtedly. Using an 3-bit counter, you have eight discrete states (0 - 7 = 000 - 111, respectively). That tranlates to an eight minute cycle, as is the case on Tom Taylor’s clock. So how 9 or 10 or some other number of minutes? Ahhh, that’s bit 4… This is proven by Tom’s clock, which goes down by powers of 2. They just knock a bit off the stack. Programmers can do such incredible things. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [July 19, 2000, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/12 "2000-07-19T05:36:58Z")
My digital alarm clock (a clunky old model by Lenoxx Sound) uses a 7-minute snooze. So did my last clock. Trivial Pursuit told me that it takes the average person 7 minutes to fall asleep. Even though I’m sure that doesn’t apply to situations where you just heard the alarm, and you’re not ready to awaken, I always figured that when picking a number like this, they cursorily used a bit of data like the one I found in TP. Incidentally, you get to realize that your snooze alarm doesn’t do its job when you know that you can keep pushing the button and falling back asleep for at least three hours. ---
**Author:** ![xizor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xizor/32/102_2.png) [@xizor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xizor)\ **Post date:** [July 20, 2000, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/13 "2000-07-20T19:54:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by jamshid \* > \*\*Designing in the logic circuitry for the “tens column” requires a separate set of gates; i.e., two sets, rather than one. You would need a set of gates that checked the “ones column” to see how many cycles had been passed; once the appropriate number of cycles had passed, the counter in the “tens column” would advance one, and the snooze alarm would go off. > \*\* No it doesn’t. You already have the gates set for the clock, triggering the snooze off the ones column output that increments the tens column requires the LESS gates than counting 9 ones. I could do it with one flip-flop. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2000, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/14 "2000-07-21T17:52:52Z")
xizor, if I understand you correctly, you are saying just tie it to the tens column, and when it rolls that triggers the snooze. The problem is that does not provide a consistent snooze. If I you set the alarm on an even :x0 min, then it works 10 min snooze, but if you set the alarm at a :x5 min or :x8 min, then you get different snooze lengths. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/original/2X/e/e489c3b7d8fce19c4b355dd4fc3f88cc39c34b87.png) [@system](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2000, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alarm-clock-9-minutes/18328/15 "2000-07-26T17:15:25Z")
My clock doesn’t even HAVE a snooze button…it has a “Drowse” button. How’s that for weird? BTW: it’s a 9 minute drowse.