How to Tell Time on a Clock | A Step-By-Step Beginner’s Guide

Welcome to Math with Mr. J. In this video, I'm going to cover how to tell time. We'll be looking at how to read a clock step by step. But before we jump into telling time, there are a few very important things that we need to understand first. Let's start with the question, how many hours are in a day? There are 24 hours in a day. Now take a look at that clock to the right. Do you notice something? The numbers only go up to 12, not 24. That's because a clock goes around twice in one day. A clock goes through two cycles. Now keep in mind, a day starts at midnight. The first 12 hours of a day are called the a.m. hours. You may have heard a time like 6 a.m. before. This may be when you wake up in the morning. Then starting at noon, the next 12 hours are called the p.m. hours. Now 6 p.m. may be when you eat dinner. We're not going to spend too much time on a.m. and p.m. right now. We don't need to worry too much about this yet. The most important thing to remember right now is that there are 24 hours in a day. So the clock goes around two full times. Moving on to our next question. How many minutes are in an hour? There are 60 minutes in an hour. This is very important to know when learning to tell time. And one more question. How many seconds are in a minute? There are 60 seconds in a minute. Now when telling time, we focus on hours and minutes. But it's still helpful to know that there are 60 seconds in a minute. So I did want to mention that. Let's move on to a few more important details. Now let's talk about the hands of a clock. Notice on the clock to the right, there are two hands. I made them different colors so we can easily tell them apart. One is red and shorter, and the other is blue and longer. We will start with the hour hand. So which hand is that? Well, the red hand is the hour hand. The hour hand is always the shorter hand on a clock. When we look at the hour hand, we focus on the big numbers around the clock. 1 through 12. Next is the minute hand. Which hand is that? The blue hand is the minute hand. The minute hand is always the longer hand. Now when we focus on minutes, remember there are 60 minutes in an hour. All of the marks around the clock represent minutes. So there are 60. Notice how the marks that are slightly bigger line up with the numbers. So these are actually used for both hours and minutes. To show you what I mean, let's start at the top of the clock at 12. That is zero minutes. That's the start of a new hour. Now moving to the right, we have 1 minute, 2 minutes, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 7 minutes, 8 minutes, 9 minutes, 10 minutes, and so on. Now minutes go all the way around the clock. Again, we have 60. Now we don't usually count every single minute like this when telling time. Instead, we can use patterns. Notice on the hours, the numbers and bigger dashes, the minutes count by fives. So instead of counting each individual minute, we can count by fives. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, 35 minutes, 40 minutes, 45 minutes, 50 minutes, 55 minutes. And to get back to the top of the clock, let's count by 1 minute to show what happens here. So 56 minutes, 57 minutes, 58 minutes, 59 minutes, and at 60 minutes, the hour starts over. So we go back to zero. So that's a quick overview of the hour hand, the minute hand, and how hours and minutes work on a clock. Now keep in mind, clocks won't always have hands that are different colors. So just remember, the shorter hand is the hour hand and the longer hand is the minute hand. Let's clear this and move on. Lastly, before we start telling time, the hands of a clock always move the same direction. And this direction is called clockwise. To give us a visual of this, here are some arrows pointing around the clock. So again, the hands of a clock always move clockwise. Now we're ready to start telling time. So let's move on. Now let's jump into telling time. We'll go through this introductory example step by step, and then we'll follow this up with more examples. Now the first thing that we need to do when reading a clock is look at the hour hand. Remember, the hour hand is the shorter hand, and here it's also red. Sometimes it will point directly at a number, and sometimes it points between two numbers. In this example, we can see the hour hand is between 8 and 9. This tells us we are past 8 o'clock, but we're not at 9 o'clock yet. So our hour here is 8. And now we need to figure out how many minutes past 8 it is. So our next step is to look at the minute hand. That's the longer hand, and here it's blue. Well, the minute hand is pointing directly at 7, but this does not mean 7 minutes. Remember, we count minutes starting at 12, and we can count by fives using the numbers. So going from 12, we have 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, 30 minutes, and 35 minutes. That means the minute hand is showing 35 minutes. And now all we need to do is put this all together. So what time is it? Well, our hour is 8, so we write 8, and then we put a colon to separate the hour from the minutes. And next, we write 35. So when we write out time, we start with the hour, then we write a colon. Then the minutes. So our time here is 8.35. And that's it. We read that clock. Again, the time, 8.35. So to recap, first, we look at the hour hand. Next, we look at the minute hand. And then lastly, we put it all together for our time. Let's move on to some more examples. Now we're ready to go through some more examples. Let's jump into number one. First, we look at the hour hand. It's between 1 and 2. So we are past 1 o'clock, but not at 2 o'clock yet. That means our hour is 1. Next, we look at the minute hand to see how many minutes past 1 it is. The minute hand is pointing to 6. So we start at 12 and go from there, counting by fives. So we have 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 minutes. So the time is 1.30. We write the hour, 1, then a colon, and then the minutes, 30. So again, our time here, 1.30. Now 1.30 is exactly halfway between 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock. Let's move on to number two. Looking at the hour hand, it's a little past 7. So our hour is 7. Now we look at the minute hand. It's pointing at 3. So going from 12, let's count by fives. 5, 10, 15 minutes. So we write the hour, 7, then a colon, and then the minutes, 15. Our time here, 7.15. Let's move on to numbers three and four. Now let's take a look at number three. The hour hand is between 10 and 11. And it's just a little past 10 here. Our hour is 10. Now we look at the minute hand. It's not pointing directly at a number. It's between 1 and 2. So we start by counting by fives to get close. And then we count the extra marks. So we start at 12 and go from there. We have 5 minutes, then 6 minutes, 7 minutes, 8 minutes. We write this as our hour, 10, then a colon, and then 08. Remember, we always use two digits for minutes. So even though it's 8 minutes, we write 08, not just 8. We do not write 10 colon 8. We say this time as 1008. We do not say 10-8. Again, we say this time as 10-08. And this goes for other single digit numbers as well. When the minutes are less than 10, we say 0 before the number. For example, we'd say 10-01, 10-02, 10-03, up to 10-09. Let's move on to number four. The hour hand is between 6 and 7. It's actually almost at 7 o'clock, but not quite. So our hour is still 6 here. The minute hand is pointing at 10. So starting at 12 and going from there, we have 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 minutes. So we write this time as 6 colon 50. And we say this as 6-50. Let's move on to numbers 5 and 6. Lastly, let's take a look at numbers 5 and 6. Notice that these clocks are not color-coded. The hands are black. So we need to use the length of the hands to tell them apart. Let's start with number 5. The hour hand, which is the shorter hand, is pointing directly at 5. So our hour is 5. The minute hand is pointing at 12. That means we are right on the hour. We have 0 minutes, 0 minutes past 5. So this is exactly 5 o'clock. So we write this time as 5 colon and then 2 zeros. Now whenever the minutes are 0, so whenever we are on an exact hour like this, we say o'clock. So for example, 10 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 3 o'clock. All other times, we do not need to say o'clock. So for example, if it's 2.30, we just say 2.30. Lastly, let's take a look at number 6. The hour hand is between 12 and 1. So our hour is 12. The minute hand is between 8 and 9. So let's start at 12 and go from there. So we're going to count by fives to get close and then count the extra minutes. So 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 minutes, then 41 minutes, 42 minutes, 43 minutes, 44 minutes. We write this as 12 colon 44. So 12, 44. So there you have it. There's how to tell time. I hope that helped. Thanks so much for watching. Until next time, peace.