What You See on a Clock

What You See on a Clock

A day is 24 hours long. A clock only shows 12 hours or half a day.

The front of a clock is called the face. Let's talk about the different parts of the clock face.

Look at this picture of a clock.

The red marks divide the clock into 12 parts. Each part is one hour. Count the red marks and see how many you get. You should have found 12.

Many clocks have a number by each mark to make it easier to tell the time.

Notice that the number 12 is at the top and the numbers 1 to 11 go around in the direction shown by the arrow. (Fun fact: this direction is called clockwise.)

The clock face has two hands that point to the time. The little hand, or hour hand, tells the hour of the day. In the first picture below, the little hand is pointing to the 1, telling you that the time is 1 o'clock. (Fun fact: o'clock is a short way of saying of the clock.)

In the next three pictures, the little hand shows other hours:

Can you tell what time it is on each clock?

An hour is made up of 60 minutes. The marks in the picture below show each minute in the hour. Try to count each of the marks and see if you get to 60. Start counting at the first blue mark to the right of the red mark at 12 o'clock. As you count, notice that every 5 marks are exactly the same as the red hour marks. The hour marks are bigger, but they are used to count the minutes as well as the hours.

The next picture shows the numbers for both the hours and the minutes. The numbers 1 through 12 on the inside of the circle are the hours. The numbers on the outside of the circle are the minutes. The picture only shows every 5 minutes--it would be too crowded if we showed every minute! Notice that the minutes go in the same direction around the clock face as the hours, in a clockwise direction.