Seconds

In your book, Maths Mela (Chapter 12), Akira, Sunita and Mary take part in a 200 m walking race at school. The winners stand on a podium with their times written as minutes and seconds: first place 01:55, second place 01:56 and third place 01:57. Here 01:55 means 1 minute 55 seconds.

Seconds are a smaller unit of time than minutes. 1 minute = 60 seconds. Every child in the race took 1 minute and a bit more, so minutes alone cannot tell us who won. Seconds show the small differences. The winner took the SHORTEST time: 1 minute 55 seconds. Second place was 1 second slower, and third place was 2 seconds slower than the winner.

Some things take just seconds, and some take minutes. Blinking your eyes, snapping your fingers, or switching a light on and off takes only a second or two. Melting of an ice cube takes minutes. On a clock, the seconds hand goes all the way round once every minute, and each time it does, the minute hand moves on by one minute.