How Do ‘Clocks’ Keep Time and Why Are There 60 Seconds in a Minute?

A clock is like a friendly robot that counts seconds, minutes, and hours to help us know what time it is.

Imagine you have a toy car that zooms around a track. Every time the car goes all the way around, that’s one full minute. Inside the clock, there are tiny gears, just like little wheels in your toy car, that spin around and around. Each big turn of the gear means one minute has passed.

Now think about how we count on our fingers. We count to 10 easily. But if you have a group of friends, and each friend holds up 5 fingers, together they show 10, 15, 20, and so on, like counting in bigger chunks. That’s what happens with seconds! There are 60 seconds in a minute because people long ago used the number 60 for counting, just like we use 10 today.

Long ago, people watched the sky and noticed that it took about 60 seconds for the moon to move slightly. That’s why they decided to use 60 as a special number, it was easy to divide into smaller parts, like halves or thirds. That made time easier to count and share!