For a lot of people, the clock rules their day. An alarm wakes many people up, and from that point on until they go to bed, they check a clock to see what time it is. How long before school begins? How much time is left before lunch? Is this class ever going to be over? There is a game at 7:30 tonight; how much time is there to spend with friends before I have to leave to get there? People ask themselves these types of questions all day; even if they don't think consciously about it.

This lesson is about time in everyday situations. It will concentrate on three areas: sports, work, and cooking. All three of these have specific requirements when it comes to time.   

Try This:

This first activity will look at sports and time. 

Everyone, at some point in life, will play a sport that involves time as a factor. This may be as simple as your physical education teacher yelling that you have 5 minutes left and you know you are down one point. This may motivate you to play harder to try to tie the game up.

Or, it may be as complicated as representing your city or town in a particular sport and knowing that every second counts when trying to win a game. Just look at the NHL.

Time is so important in their games that in the last minute of every period, they don't just count the seconds; they count the tenths of seconds! Goals to tie or win games have been scored with less than one second on the clock when the puck has crossed the goal line!

With any serious game that involves a set time period, there is an event called "clock watching," and it is always interesting to observe the players doing it.

If you are up by a single goal, you constantly watch the clock. You may be thinking it must be broken because it is going so slow and the game will never end! But, if you are losing, every time you glance at the clock, time seems to be passing too quickly!

As a fan, it is important to know how to figure out how much time has gone by. This is called elapsed time. And how much time is left. This is called remaining time. This will allow you to enjoy the game on a whole new level.

Let's look closely at the game of hockey.
Each period in hockey is 20 minutes long. In North America, the time clock counts down to zero, while in other parts of the world, it counts up to 20 minutes. We will use the North American clock in our example.

What about the CFL? A football game has four 15-minute quarters. Just like the NHL, the clock starts at 15 minutes and counts down to zero.

In both of the examples above, the clock counted down to zero. The remaining time is simply whatever the clock says at that time.

  Self-check!

Try This!

Calculate the elapsed time in this sports problem.

Courtesy of Pixabay

Let's say there are 5:15 minutes remaining in the second period of the hockey game. Calculate how much time has elapsed in the period.

Check your answer here:

1. You know there are 60 seconds in a minute, so deal with the seconds first.

    60 – 15 = 45
    Forty-five seconds have elapsed in this minute.
    This brings the time back up to 6 minutes.

    2. Now you can calculate the number of minutes that have elapsed. Remember there are 20 minutes in a period and there are 6 minutes left in the period.

    20 – 6 = 14
       Fourteen full minutes have elapsed in the period.

    3. Put the full number of minutes and the seconds together to tell how much time has elapsed.

    14 minutes + 45 seconds
   Fourteen minutes and 45 seconds have elapsed in the second period.