For the hour hand, if it went from 12 pm to 4pm, doesn’t that mean that the hour hand circled 4 times to get from 12pm to 4pm? 12 - 1, 1 -2, 2-3, and then 3pm to 4pm? Then wouldn’t that be 4 times the circumference + the 1/3 circumference (4 pie) that Greg found in this video?
Any help would be appreciated.
Hey @hiiie28,
The hour hand and the minute hand of a clock move differently. From 12 PM to 4 PM, it’s a span of 4 hours.
-The hour hand only moves 1/3 of the full clock during those 4 hours because the clock is divided into 12 hours, and 4 hours is just a third of that (4 out of 12 hours).
-In each hour (like from 12 to 1), the hour hand moves one step, covering 60 minutes worth of space on the clock. Over 4 hours, it moves 4 steps or 240 minutes on the clock.
If we were to assume the hour hand circled the clock 4 times, that would mean it covered 4 full rotations, which equals 96 hours (since 1 full rotation represents 12 hours × 4). That doesn’t happen here, as it only moves for 4 hours, covering a small portion of the clock.
So, the idea of “4 times” applies only to the minute hand because it completes one full rotation every hour, not the hour hand.
Oh wait yes you are right! I got confused with the hour hand.
Thanks for your response!
