Follow both hands
Each added minute moves the long hand six degrees and the short hand half a degree.
Clock Gear Workshop
Move elapsed minutes and watch the minute and hour hands turn together, including across twelve o’clock.
Grades 2–5 · Math
Your goal
Advance 15 minutes from 9:00 to 9:15. Watch both hands move together.
Reduced motion is on. The controls still update the scene.
0 minutes have passed since 9:00. The clock now reads 9:00. The long minute hand turns 6 degrees per minute, while the short hour hand moves half a degree per minute. A 12-hour face repeats after 720 minutes.
Move the hands together
Use the minute control or its one-minute step buttons to turn both hands. This ideal clock has no seconds hand or AM and PM indicator. Elapsed time stays visible through a repeating 12-hour face, up to 780 minutes.
Related resources
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Study as flashcards
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Learn with Clock Gear Workshop
Clock Gear Workshop connects elapsed time with the linked movement of an analog clock’s hands. Students move a minute control or add familiar intervals while the hour hand advances by the correct smaller amount. The hour hand sits between hour marks when the displayed time is between whole hours. Goals include quarter hours, crossing twelve, and intervals that extend beyond a complete twelve-hour turn. A visible elapsed-minute count distinguishes repeated clock faces, helping elementary learners reason about duration as well as reading the displayed time.
What to look for
Build useful intervals
Use five-minute, fifteen-minute, and sixty-minute buttons or move one minute at a time with the step controls.
Track repeated faces
The clock face repeats after 720 minutes. Read the elapsed-minute count to distinguish a short interval from a full twelve-hour turn.
For teachers and curious learners
Relate elapsed minutes to coupled minute-hand and hour-hand movement on a repeating twelve-hour clock. Ask students to predict what will happen, change one setting, and explain what they observe. Learn gives a starting point. Practice and Challenge offer new goals with the same scene.
This ideal twelve-hour clock advances in whole-minute steps and derives both hand angles from the same elapsed time. It omits seconds, AM and PM, and mechanical gear details. Elapsed time is bounded from zero to 780 minutes.