Time cannot be seen or touched. But if you know some tricks and practical tricks, you can easily teach your child to understand the time and tell it by the clock. Theory and practice, games and exercises to get you started - read and try.

It so happens that even at a decent age, people admit that they only use electronic watches. And they all have one reason - either their parents did not explain to them in childhood how to use a clock with hands, or they explained it by mistake. To prevent this from happening, it is important not to ignore the problem. Where to start teaching a child to understand the time by the clock?

What does a child need to know to tell the time by the clock?

Before you start learning about time, check your child's understanding of the basics. Does he know how to count? Is it oriented in key concepts related to time? Often, parents face learning difficulties and stubbornly fail to notice the root of the problem (the child confuses “left” and “right”, does not count well enough, etc.) Therefore, it will be useful to go over the basic skills and make sure that the gaps that can interfere with the child go further, no.

Count to 60

Least. And it is better generally up to 100. We consolidate the skill of counting with exercises:

• - we call the double numbers that we see (these can be price tags in the store, house numbers, etc.);
• - we train the countdown (from 100 to 1);
• - we learn to name the "neighbors" of round numbers (50 - neighbors 49 and 51, 90 - neighbors 89 and 91, etc.).

Count as multiples of 5

Surely you have already explained to your child that such numbers always end in 5 or 0. It remains to learn how to list and use them without hesitation.

• - count as multiples of 5, in forward and backward order;
• - we simulate tasks where it is required to count as fives (Vlad decided to do push-ups five times every day. How many times will he do push-ups in a week, two weeks, a month? day?)

Try online classes at LogicLike

• Complete the 3 starting chapters of the course - and open access to different categories. Be sure to solve Smart Counting and Logic Tasks.
• Try tasks of different difficulty levels: "Beginner", "Experienced", "Expert".

Distinguish between "left" and "right"

For study in general and not to confuse the concept of "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" as well.

Have a general idea of ​​time

Explain to the child the concepts of "yesterday", "today", "tomorrow"; "past present Future"; Morning, day, evening, night, day. Often, children themselves associate time with a specific event: “in the morning I did exercises”, “at lunchtime I ate soup,” “I brushed my teeth before going to bed,” etc. Therefore, when explaining the above concepts, it is best for the parent to link specific events to them.

Correct the child carefully if he makes mistakes somewhere. It is important that he does not have a false understanding of time.

Have you successfully passed the preparatory stage? Now we can teach the child to understand the time by the clock with arrows.

Teaching the child to understand the time by the clock with arrows

Oh, those adults! And why are they only allowed to watch cartoons for 15 or 20 minutes? For children, time is an incomprehensible figure. To figure out where it comes from, you need a watch with arrows. If there are none at home, but only electronic ones, it will be difficult for a child to understand what time is. Therefore, the first step for a parent is to acquire a wall or special children's clock, on which numbers and arrows will be clearly visible.

Introducing the child to the watch device

First, explain to your child the concepts of "dial", "day", "hours", "minutes", "seconds"; “Exactly one hour”, “half an hour”, “quarter of an hour”, tell us about the hour, minute, second hands. Please note that all arrows have different lengths. Have the child observe which of the arrows is the fastest and which practically stands still. And how long does it take for each to go through the whole circle.

Be sure to link all the basic concepts into one logical chain: there are 24 hours in a day, 1 hour is 60 minutes, and 1 minute is 60 seconds. Don't miss the terms "clockwise" and "counterclockwise". Let your child know that time is always moving forward.

We teach the child to "read" the hour and minute hands at the same time

The first step is to teach your child to count the minutes in multiples of 5. Minutes are not indicated on a conventional analogue clock, so this skill needs to be worked out. You can come up with a legend that each number on the dial has its own "shadow". 1 is 5 minutes, 2 is 10 minutes, 3 is 15 minutes, etc. The "shadow" can only be seen when the minute hand is pointing at the number. When the child finds it easy to navigate in five-minute intervals, tell him about the smaller intervals.

The hour hand also has two meanings. In the first half of the day, we see the numbers as they appear on the dial, but after a hearty afternoon snack at 12:00, they begin to "get fat": 1 turns into 12, 2 - into 14, etc. A funny analogy will help your child grasp the meaning faster.

The ability to determine the time by a clock with arrows must be reinforced with specific examples. Pay your child's attention to the watch more often. Correct him if he is wrong to tell the time.

The best gift for a child who is learning to tell the time by the clock is a wrist watch. With them, he will become more willing to answer the question "What time is it?" and he will definitely ask you about it in order to check with his "walkers".

Ideally, the child should have a "rough" watch that he can "exploit" as he pleases: set the time on it, add "shadows" to each of the numbers, sign the names of the hands. For teaching, you can use an old non-working clock (wall or table). They need to remove the glass so that the arrows can be turned. If you have not found such houses, we suggest you make your own.

We make homemade watches

Homemade watches can help make time more tangible. If you have the right materials, it will take no more than 15 minutes to create them.

How to make a watch yourself

The dial can be based on a disposable plate or a circle made of cardboard. We draw a circle in half, then again in half and apply the first numbers. Next, we carefully divide each quarter into three parts and add the remaining numbers. The dial is ready, which means it's time to attach the hands. We cut them out of cardboard of different colors and attach them to a circle using a button. We put the resulting model of the clock next to the real clock.

When creating your own watch, it will be useful to go over the concepts already learned. We drew a circle into four parts - remembered the “quarter of an hour”, attached the hour hand - remembered its function, and so on.

Homemade watches can look unusual. For example, like this:

Games and tasks with clocks

Games and tasks will help to consolidate the ability to determine the time by the clock.

"What time is it now"

Show your child how the arrows move. Change their position and name the time. Then have your child do the same exercise. Change the time clockwise and counterclockwise.

We complicate the game. We show the time on the clock and associate it with events (“here is 7:00”, at this time we wake up ”,“ here is 18:00, at this time we have dinner ”, etc.). Now we offer the child to pretend to live the whole day.

"Drawing pizza"

The good thing about a homemade dial is that you can make your own notes on it. Ask your child to draw lines from the center of the dial to the numbers and shade each sector with a different color. The result will be “colored pie” or “colored pizza” (this will make it easier to understand 5-minute intervals). Label the second values ​​of each of the numbers (2-10, 3-15) and minutes (1-60).

"Daily regime"

Take a piece of paper, write down the daily routine, and together with your child, illustrate it with pictures of the clock in which the time interval is indicated (8:00 - it's time for school, 15:00 - it's time to do homework, etc.). Hang over your child's bed or desk. So the child will learn not only to do everything on time, but also to navigate in time.

Pay attention to the child how much time he spends on this or that action. So you can accustom him to punctuality from an early age.

"Two options to name the time"

Tell your child that time can be named in different ways (for example, 1 hour 18 minutes is eighteen minutes past one, etc.). Write down the second, more difficult option on a piece of paper, and indicate the clue numbers to make it easier for the child to cope (example: "five minutes to eight", clue numbers - 9, 5, 5, 1). Gradually discard prompts.

"Cubes"

To play you will need 4 dice and our homemade watch. Throw the dice in pairs. The first pair of cubes will determine the hours, the second pair will determine the minutes. The time that has fallen must be set on the toy clock.

There are also interactive games with clocks on the LogicLike platform. We have more than 3500 exciting tasks for preschool and primary school children that help develop logic, thinking, memory.

We acquaint the child with electronic, sundial, hourglass

When the child has learned to tell the time by a clock with hands, it’s time to introduce him to other clocks. You have where to move on! Acquaintance with electronic, sundial, hourglass will help the child deepen his understanding of time. Moreover, it will be no less interesting to deal with them.

Digital Watch are more conventional than a clock with hands, they cannot be used to track the course of time visually. But if the child figured out how the hours and minutes are counted, then there should be no problems. Get an electronic clock and instruct your child to keep track of the time on them. In the same TV program, the time is always indicated in electronic format, so the first thing you can do is remember what time cartoons and children's programs begin.

Sundial more like a clock with hands, so it will be easier to figure it out. It remains to wait for a sunny day, draw a circle on the sand, set a wooden stick in the center, check the time with a mechanical clock and finish drawing the dial. And you can be fascinated to watch how the shadow from the wand gradually creeps clockwise.

Hourglass it will also be most convenient to compare with arrowheads. They measure out very short periods of time. Invite your child to simultaneously observe the second hand on a mechanical watch and the passage of time in an hourglass. By the way, with them it is much more fun to carry out tasks for a while: make the bed, put all the toys in a box, etc., until the sand stops pouring.

Teaching a child to understand time is not as difficult as it seems. By solving this problem in childhood, you will help your child become a punctual person for whom the sense of time will not be a weak point.

At 5-7 years of age, most children have a peak of cognitive activity. And this is in many ways the best time to develop together in an interesting and diverse way. Until the child was drawn into school days.

To help parents - entertaining logical tasks, exercises for the development of thinking, attention, memory and speech.

Try to solve it yourself!
If something does not work out, do not despair, the answer and the solution are located below.

1. How many times a day do the clock readings have the property that, by swapping the minute and hour hands, we arrive at a meaningful hour reading?

2. How many times a day do the hour and minute hands form a right angle?

3. How many minutes will the clock hands (normal) overlap after alignment?

4. How many times is the number showing how many times the speed of the second hand is greater than the speed of the minute hand, greater than the number showing how many times the speed of the minute hand is greater than the speed of the hour hand?

5. How many times will the hour hands be on top of each other in 12 hours?

6. Some work began at five o'clock and finished at eight o'clock, and the clock at the beginning and at the end of the work is translated into each other if the hour and minute hands are reversed. Determine the duration of the work and show that at the beginning and at the end of the work the arrows were equally deviated from the vertical direction.

7. How many times does the minute hand overtake the hour hand per day? And the second?

8. The clock struck midnight. How many times and at what points in time until next midnight will the hour and minute hands be aligned?

9. Between which digits is the second hand at the moment the hour hand first aligns with the minute after noon?

10. Why do the hands on the clock run from left to right (clockwise), and not vice versa?

11. On a watch with three hands - hour, minute and second - all three hands coincide at 12 o'clock. Are there other times when all three arrows coincide?

12. The task proposed Lewis Carroll : which clocks show the time more accurately: those that are behind by a minute a day, or those that do not run at all?

13. How many degrees does the minute hand turn in a minute? Hour hand?

14. Determine the value of the angle between the hour and minute hands of the watch, showing 1 hour 10 minutes, provided that both hands move at constant speeds.

15.

16. But you probably noticed that this is not the only moment when the hands of the clock meet: they overtake each other several times during the day. Can you point out all the times when this happens?

17. When will the next meeting take place?

18. At 6 o'clock, on the contrary, both hands are directed in opposite directions. But does it happen only at 6 o'clock, or are there other moments when the hands are so located?

19. I glanced at my watch and noticed that both hands are equally spaced from the number 6, on either side. What time was it?

20. At what hour is the minute hand ahead of the hour exactly as much as the hour is ahead of the number 12 on the dial? Or maybe there are several such moments a day, or do they not happen at all?

21. What is the angle of the clock hands at 12 hours and 20 minutes?

22. Find the angle between the hour and minute hands a) at 9 hours 15 minutes; b) at 14 hours 12 minutes?

23. When the angle between the hour and minute hands of the clock is greater than a) at 13:45 or at 22:15; b) at 13:43 or 22:17; c) t minutes in the afternoon or t minutes before midnight?

24. The hands of the clock have just met. In how many minutes will they "look" in opposite directions?

25. How can you explain that in a working watch, the minute hand has passed 6 minutes in one second.

26. An accurate chronometer was used to establish that the hour and minute hands of evenly running (but at the wrong speed!) Hours coincide every 66 minutes. How many minutes per hour is this clock behind or behind?

27. In Italy, a watch is produced in which the hour hand makes one revolution per day, and the minute hand makes 24 revolutions, and, as usual, the minute hand is longer than the hour (in ordinary hours, the hour hand makes two revolutions per day, and the minute hand - 24). Consider all the positions of the two hands and the zero division, which are found on both Italian and ordinary watches. How many such provisions are there? (The zero division marks 24 hours in Italian watches and 12 hours in regular watches.)

28. Vasya measured with a protractor and wrote down the angles between the hour and minute hands in a notebook, first at 8:20 and then at 9:25. After that, Petya took his protractor. Help Vasya find the angles between the arrows at 10:30 and 11:35.

29. How many times from 12:00 to 23:59 do the minute and hour hands of the clock match?

30. It's noon on the clock. When will the hour and minute hands coincide next?

31. Indicate at least one point in time, other than 6:00 and 18:00, when the hour and minute hands of the clock running correctly are directed in opposite directions.

32. When Petya began to solve this problem, he noticed that the hour and minute hands of his watch form a right angle. While he was solving it, the corner was obtuse all the time, and at the moment when Petya finished the solution, the corner became right again. How long did Petya solve this problem?

33. Petya woke up at 8 o'clock in the morning and noticed that the hour hand of his alarm clock halves the angle between the minute hand and the bell hand pointing to the number 8. How long before the alarm clock should ring?

34. Kolya went to pick mushrooms between eight and nine o'clock in the morning at the moment when the hour and minute hands of his watch were aligned. He returned home between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, while the hands of his watch were directed in opposite directions. How long did Colin's walk last?

35. The student began solving the problem between 9 and 10 o'clock and finished between 12 and 13 o'clock. How long did he solve the problem if during this time the hour and minute hands of the clock were reversed?

36. How many times during the day do the hour and minute hands of a clock running correctly form an angle of 30 degrees?

37. Before you is a clock. How many positions of the hands are there, by which it is impossible to determine the time, if you do not know which hand is hour and which is minute? (It is believed that the position of each of the arrows can be determined accurately, but you cannot follow how the arrows move.)

38. In the world of antipodes, the minute hand of the clock moves at normal speed, but in the opposite direction. How many times a day the hands of the antipodal clock a) coincide; b) opposite?

39. How many times a day is it impossible to distinguish an antipode clock from a normal one (if you don’t know what time it really is)?

40. At noon, the fly sat down on the second hand of the clock and drove off, adhering to the following rules: if it overtakes some hand or some hand overtakes it (except for the second, the watch has hour and minute hands), then the fly crawls to this hand. How many laps will a fly fly in an hour?

The regularity of time

Find out the pattern in changing the time on the clock and determine what the clock at number five should show.

Assignments with the OGE

1. What is the angle (in degrees) of the minute and hour hands of the clock at 4 o'clock?
2. What angle (in degrees) does the minute hand describe in 6 minutes?

USE assignments

1. The clock with hands shows 8 hours 00 minutes. In how many minutes will the minute hand align with the hour hand for the fourth time?

This task is no more difficult than the task of moving in a circle. We have hour and minute hands moving in a circle. The minute hand goes a full circle in an hour, that is, 360 °. Means, its speed is 360 ° per hour... The hour hand passes an angle of 30 ° per hour (this is the angle between two adjacent numbers on the dial). Means, its speed is 30 ° per hour.

At 8:00 a.m. the distance between the hands is 240 °:

Let the minute hand meet the hour hand for the first time in t hours. During this time, the minute hand will travel 360 ° t, and the hour hand 30 ° t, and the minute hand will pass 240 ° more than the hour hand. We get the equation:

360 ° t-30 ° t = 240 °

t = 240 ° / 330 ° = 8/11

That is, in 8/11 hours the hands will meet for the first time.

Now, until the next meeting, the minute hand will move 360 ​​° more than the hour hand. Let it happen in x hours.

We get the equation:

360 ° x-30 ° x = 360 °. Hence x = 12/11. And so two more times.

We get that the minute hand for the fourth time will equalize with the hour hand after 8/11 + 12/11 + 12/11 + 12/11 = 4 hours = 240 minutes.

Answer: 240 minutes.

2. The clock with the hands shows 1 hour 35 minutes. In how many minutes will the minute hand align with the hour hand for the tenth time?

In this problem, the speed of movement of the arrows will be expressed in degrees / minute.

The speed of the minute hand is 360˚ / 60 = 6˚ per minute.

The hour hand speed is 30˚ / 60 = 0.5˚ per minute.

At 0 o'clock the position of the hour and minute hands coincided. 1 hour 35 minutes is 95 minutes. During this time, the minute hand passed 95x6 = 570˚ = 360˚ + 210˚, and the hour hand passed 95x0.5˚ = 47.5˚. And we have this picture:

The first time the hands will meet in a time when the hour hand turns to, and the minute hand is 150˚ + 47.5˚ more. We get the equation for:

The next time the hands will meet when the minute passes one circle more than the hour:

And so 9 times.

The minute hand will align with the hour for the tenth time in minutes

Answers:

1. in 12 hours 132, in 24 hours 264 times plus 22 overlays, total 286

2. The hour hand makes 2 revolutions per day, and the minute hand makes 24. Hence the minute hand overtakes the hour hand 22 times and each time two right angles are formed with the hour hand, i.e. answer - 44 .

3. It is easy to imagine that this will happen after 1 hour 5 5/11 minutes, that is, at 2 hours 10 10/11 minutes. The next one - after another 1 hour 5 5/11 minutes, that is, at 3 hours 16 4/11 minutes, etc. All meetings, as is easy to see, will be 11; The 11th will come in 1 1/11 - 12 hours after the first, that is, at 12 o'clock; in other words, it coincides with the first meeting, and further meetings will be repeated again in the same moments.

Here are all the moments of the meetings:

1st meeting - at 1 hour 5 5/11 minutes

2nd "-" 2 hours 10 10/11 "

3rd "-" 3 hours 16 4/11 "

4th "-" 4 hours 21 9/11 "

5th "-" 5 hours 27 3/11 "

6th "-" 6 hours 32 8/11 "

2 hours 46, 153 minutes

7. The hour hand makes 2 revolutions per day, and the minute hand makes 24. From here the minute hand overtakes the hour 22 times.

9 . 4 and 5

10. This is how the shadow moves in the very first hours - the sun. And then the mechanical watch copied the direction of movement of the hands. By the way, in the Southern Hemisphere the opposite is true - the shadow in the sundial moves counterclockwise. In an hour, the minute hand makes a full revolution. This means that in a minute, it rotates by 1/60 of an angle of 360 °, that is, by 6 °. The hour hand travels 1 / 12th of the circle per hour, that is, it moves 12 times slower than the minute hand. It turns 0.5 ° in a minute.

14 . At 1:00 the minute hand "lagged behind" the hour hand by 30 °. In 10 minutes after this moment, the hour hand will "pass" 5 °, and the minute hand - 60 °, so the angle between them is 60 ° - 30 ° - 5 ° = 25 °.

15 . Let x be the time interval in minutes that must elapse before the arrows are located on one straight line and point in different directions. The minute hand will have time to pass x minute divisions of the dial during this time, and the hour hand - x / 12 minute divisions. When the hands are on the same straight line and point in different directions, they will be separated by 30 minute divisions of the dial. So, at this time x - x / 12 = 30, whence x = 32 (8/11). After 32 (8/11) minutes, the hands will "look" in opposite directions.

16 . Let's start watching the movement of the hands at 12 o'clock. At this moment, both arrows cover each other. Since the hour hand moves 12 times slower than the minute hand (it describes a full circle at 12 o'clock, and the minute hand at 1 o'clock), then, of course, the hands cannot meet within the next hour. But now an hour has passed; the hour hand stands at the number 1, having made 1/12 of a full turn; the minute one has made a full revolution and stands again at 12 - 1/12 of a circle behind the hour. Now the conditions of the competition are different than before: the hour hand moves slower than the minute hand, but it is ahead, and the minute hand must catch up with it. If the competition lasted a whole hour, then during this time the minute hand would go a full circle, and the hour hand would go through 1/12 of the circle, that is, the minute hand would have done 11/12 more circles. But in order to catch up with the hour hand, the minute hand needs to go more than the hour hand, only by that 1/12 of the circle that separates them. This will take not a whole hour, but less time as many times as 1/12 is less than 11/12, that is, 11 times. This means that the hands will meet in 1/11 hour, that is, in 60/11 = 5 5/11 minutes. So, the meeting of the shooters will happen 5 5/11 minutes after 1 hour has passed, that is, at 5 5/11 minutes of the second.

21. Answer: It is not hard to imagine that this will happen after 1 hour 5 5/11 minutes, that is, at 2 hours 10 10/11 minutes. The next one - after another 1 hour 5 5/11 minutes, that is, at 3 hours 16 4/11 minutes, etc. All meetings, as is easy to see, will be 11; The 11th will come in 1 1/11 - 12 hours after the first, that is, at 12 o'clock; in other words, it coincides with the first meeting, and further meetings will be repeated again in the same moments. Here are all the moments of the meeting:

24. Suppose that both hands were at 12, and then the hour moved away from 12 for some part of a full revolution, which we will designate with the letter x. The minute hand managed to turn 12x in the same time. If the time has passed no more than one hour, then in order to satisfy the requirement of our task, it is necessary that the minute hand is spaced from the end of the whole circle by the same amount as the hour hand has time to move away from the beginning; in other words: 1 - 12 x = x Hence 1 = 13 x. Therefore, x = 1/13 of the whole turnover. The hour hand passes this fraction of a revolution at 12/13 hours, that is, it shows 55 5/13 minutes of the first. The minute hand at the same time has passed 12 times more, that is, 12/13 of a full revolution; both arrows, as you can see, are equally spaced from 12, and therefore equally spaced from 6 on different sides. We found one position of the hands - exactly the one that occurs during the first hour. During the second hour, a similar situation will come again; we will find it, arguing according to the previous one, from the equality 1 - (12x - 1) = x, or 2-12x = x, whence 2 = 13x, and, therefore, x = 2/13 of the total revolution. In this position, the hands will be at 1 11/13 o'clock, that is, at 50 10/13 minutes of the second. For the third time, the hands will take the required position when the hour hand moves from 12 to 3/13 of a full circle, that is, 2 10/13 o'clock, etc. All positions 11, and after 6 o'clock the hands change places: the hour hand occupies those If you carefully observe the clock, then perhaps you happened to observe exactly the opposite arrangement of the hands than is now described: the hour hand is ahead of the minute by the same amount, by how much the minute has moved forward from the number 12. When does this happen? Answer: For the first time, the required position of the hands will be at that moment, which is determined by the equality: 12x - 1 = x / 2, whence 1 = 11 ½ x, or x = 2/23 of a whole revolution, that is, 1 1/23 hours after 12. This means that at 1 o'clock 21 4/23 minutes the hands will be positioned as required. Indeed, the minute hand should stand in the middle between 12 and 1 1/23 o'clock, that is, at 12/23 hours, which is exactly 1/23 of a full revolution (the hour hand will travel 2/23 of a whole revolution). The second time the arrows will be positioned in the required way at the moment, which is determined from the equality: 12x - 2 = x / 2, whence 2 = 11 1/2 x and x = 4/23; the desired moment - 2 hours 5 5/23 minutes, the third desired moment - 3 hours 7 19/23 minutes, etc.

This problem is a variation of the classic Microsoft interview question, when applicants were asked how many times a day the hour and minute hands meet each other. As this question is now widely known, interviewers have begun to use a variation of it.

Let us first consider a variant of the most expected solution, a mathematical one. First, imagine a situation where the hour and minute hands overlap. Everyone knows it happens at midnight, then around 1:05, 2:10, 3:15, and so on. In other words, they overlap every hour, except for the period from 11:00 to 12:00. At 11:00, the faster minute hand is at 12 and the slower hour hand is at 11:00. Until 12:00 noon they will not meet with each other, and therefore they will not overlap around 11 o'clock.

Thus, there are 11 overlays in every 12-hour period. They are evenly spaced in time, since both arrows move at a constant speed. This means that the intervals between overlays are 12/11 hours. This is equivalent to 1 hour 5 minutes 27 and 3/11 seconds. Therefore, for each 12-hour cycle, overlaps occur in the periods indicated in the picture.

Let's go back to the second hand. Its imposition on the minute is possible when the number of minutes coincides with the number of seconds. The exact overlay occurs at 00:00:00. In general, the minute and second hands only overlap for a fraction of a second. For example, at 12:37:37 the second hand will point to 37, lagging behind the minute hand, which at this time will be between 37 and 38 and lagging behind the hour. In a moment, the minute and second will overlap, but the sentry will not be near them. Those. all three arrows will not overlap.

The second hand will not overlap in any of the options in the picture, except for midnight and noon. This means that the final answer to the question is: twice a day.

And here's the answer that Google welcomes. The second hand is designed to show short time intervals, not to tell the time to the nearest second. If it is out of sync with the other two hands, this is quite normal. Synchronization here means that at midnight and noon, all three hands point exactly to 12. Most analog clocks of all kinds do not allow you to pinpoint the second hand. It would be necessary to remove the battery or wait, if we talk about a mechanical watch, when the spring winding ends, and then, when the second hand is stopped, synchronize the minute and hour hands with each other, and then wait for the time shown on the clock to return battery or wind up the clock.

To do all this, you need to be a maniac or a fan of punctuality. But if you don’t do all this, the second hand will not show “real” time. It will differ from the exact seconds by some amount in a random interval of up to 60 seconds. Given the occasional discrepancy, there is no chance that all three arrows will ever meet. This never happens.