2016 comeback

First, in a 24 hour cycle, we need to find out how many times the minute and hour hand overlap. To find out, we have to determine the relationship between the sweeps made by the hands.

The hour hand travels at $\frac{30\deg}{hr}$ , while the minute hand travels at $\frac{360\deg}{hr}$ . After 0:00 (12:00 midnight of the day), the hour hand and the minute hand will meet again a little after 1:00.

Exactly, this is determined by

$30x = 360x - 360(y)$

where $y$ denotes the number of full rotations the minute hand has passed, which, just right after 1:00, is 1. We subtract it because at this time $x$ , the minute hand will have completed $y$ full laps already.

In this case, $x$ becomes $\frac{12}{11}$ hours from 0:00. In the same manner, we can determine the next time the hands meet, substituting $y$ with $2$ . Since we like to know how many times these overlaps occur in a day, we use $x = 24$ and solve for $y$ , giving us $y=22$ . This means after 0:00 of day 1, there are 22 overlaps, but including 0:00 of day 2. Thus, there are just a total of 22 overlaps in a day.

So for this question, we may now find at what day the 2016th overlap occurs. Dividing 2016 by 22 gives 91 with a remainder of 14. This means the 2016th overlap falls on the day 91 days after January 1, which is April 1.

A remainder of 14 means that it falls on the 14th occurence within the day, or, based on the equation, is the 13th occurence after 0:00 of April 1. Solving for this gives us 2:10:55 pm, or 14:10:55. Thus, the final answer is

April 1 at 14:10:55

$0401141055$