What is the measure of the angle formed by the hands of a clock where the hour hand is at five and the minute hand is at 12?

Answer 1

Let's work it out. A clock face is a circle. A circle has 360 degrees. It also has 12 hour marks. How many degrees per hour mark? To answer this kind of question you always do the same thing. Take "degrees per hour mark" and turn the "per" into "divided by". Then put in the numbers you have. This is how you calculate "miles per gallon" (divide the miles driven by the gallons used) or "percent" ("cent" means "100", so divide your number by 100). In our case, we divide 360 by 12. We get 30 degrees for each hour mark. You can check this formula by looking at a clock face and seeing if there are any familiar angles. You'll notice right away that the angle between 12 and 3 is a right angle. 30 * 3 = 90 degrees, which is a right angle. Good. Moving on. If the minute hand is on 12, and the hour hand is on 5, there are 5 hour marks between the hands. Now multiply 30 degrees by 5 to get the answer to your question, which is 150 degrees. It's always a good idea to check your answer to see if it makes sense. In this case, you can compare the answer to what you'd get for 3 o'clock (30 * 3 = 90) and 6 o'clock (30 * 6 = 180). Our answer is between these numbers, as it should be. And it's closer to 180 than to 90, as it should be. Hope this helps, Gdunge