What Is Digital and Analog Clock?

The clock is incredibly important to master. To be able to do everything you want to in a day, it is important to watch the time closely. There are two types of clocks; digital clocks and analog clocks. Here you will learn about both of them.

Digital Clock

The digital clock is probably the one you see more often: on your phone, the computer, or the cooker in the kitchen. A digital watch consists of two pairs of digits separated by a dot or a colon, as in the picture below. The two first digits show hours, and the last two digits show how many minutes you are into that exact hour. The two last digits go from $00$ to $59$ and cover the $60$ minutes in each hour.

On a digital clock, there are two ways of displaying the hours of the day. One day is $24$ hours.

Some digital clocks go from $01$ to $12$ in their first two digits. These clocks have split the day into two halves of $12$ hours each. To specify whether it’s one o’clock in the day or the night, the clock would show $01:00$ AM for nighttime and $01:00$ PM for daytime. When the clock has gone through two loops of $12$ hours, one day has passed. Then, the clock will begin at $12:00$ AM again, and a new day begins.

Other digital clocks display hours in their two first digits by going from $00$ to $23$, where $00:00$ is midnight and $12:00$ is noon. Occasionally, people might refer to $24:00$ when talking about the end of a day.

Analog Clock

Above, you learned about the digital clock. Now you are going to learn about the analog clock. The analog clock is often seen on the wall of classrooms. The analog clock has hands to tell the time. In the picture below, you can see that the analog clock consists of a dial where the numbers from $1$ up to and including $12$ are placed evenly along the rim of the dial. The number $12$ is on top of the dial, and the number $6$ is at the bottom. The number $3$ is furthest to the right, and the number $9$ is furthest to the left.

As the two hands move around the dial, they point at the different numbers. One of the hands is long, and tells the minutes. This hand is called the minute hand. The minute hand moves $60$ times in one hour, because there are $60$ minutes in an hour. By moving $60$ times, the minute hand moves around the entire dial in one hour. The other hand is short, and shows hours. This hand is called the hour hand. By looking at which number the hands are pointing at, you can see which hour you are in, and how many minutes into that hour you are.

Since there are $24$ hours in a day, and the analog clock only shows $12$ hours, the hour hand has to move around the dial twice before a whole day has passed.