Imagine an analog clock set to 12 o’clock. Note that the hour and minute hands overlap. How many times each day do both the hour and minute hands overlap? How would you determine the exact times of the day that this occurs? (Got this problem off of http://vijay.techi.googlepages.com/puzzles but it was one of their Microsoft questions).
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One reply on “Overlapping clock hands”
Hour hand circles around the clock once every 12 hours. Technically the hour and minute hands overlap 12+11 times – use this as an opportunity to bring up fence post errors.
Each overlap time is 1/12th of an hour (1/12)(60) = 5. So 5 mins per overlap time. So the clock will overlap at {0, 5, 10, 15,…, 55, 0, 5, 10}.