This time duration calculator allows you to calculate the duration between two times. It accepts either two elapsed times or two clock times, where it supports both the 12-hour and 24-hour time of day formats. The calculator correctly handles time durations that span midnight. As a bonus, this article shows you how to calculate time duration manually, making sure you have a firm understanding of the maths behind the calculator. Show
After you've finished using this calculator, you might also be interested in our day counter calculator. What is time?Simplistically, time is the 4th dimension in our Universe, along with the three spatial dimensions of length, width, and height. You could say that time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once. A universe without time wouldn't be a particularly exciting place to live. Time provides separation of events and allows cause and effect to be determined. So that's time sorted, right? Err, no. Not really. Physicists and philosophers are still debating the exact nature of time and how it behaves to this very day. Fortunately for us, as long as we measure two times in the same inertial frame of reference (a little bit of relativity there, time dilation calculator will help you grasp the concept), our time duration calculator will work just fine, without knowing exactly what time is. How to use the elapsed time calculator?The elapsed time calculator is in the first part of the calculator, found at the top. Enter a start time and an end time, and you will see the duration between those two times. By default, you can enter the times in hours, minutes, and seconds. However, if you click on the units, you can select other time units to suit your needs. Note that you can enter any two times in this section of the calculator (as long as the end elapsed time is more than the start elapsed time), and there are no restrictions imposed by the 12- or 24-hour time formats. Though if you are interested in the duration between two clock times, the next section of the calculator is just for you. How to use the clock time calculator?The second section of the calculator is a clock time calculator. This calculator helps work out the duration between two times during a single day, or overnight. You can choose to either work with the 12-hour clock format (the one we most use in everyday life) or the 24-hour format (which you might encounter when booking a flight, for example). Here's how you use the clock time duration calculator:
If you need to calculate time durations for a whole week at work, then our time card calculator might be worth checking out. How to calculate time duration manually?Let's take some time to discuss how to do these time duration calculations manually. The same principles apply to both the elapsed time calculator and the clock time calculator (though for the clock time calculator, if you are using the 12-hour time format, the first thing to do is to convert it to the 24-hour format. The solution is simply a case of adding 12 hours to any pm times!). We will first study the example of calculating the time duration between 8:13 am and 4:55 pm. So we first convert the pm time to the 24-hour format:
We can then write down the two times the same way you would do a manual math subtraction: 16:55−8:138:41\small \begin{array}{rrrrr} 16:55\\ -8:13\\ \hline 8:41 \end{array}16:55−8:138:41 Then calculate the difference in hours and minutes separately. In this example, the result for the number of hours is Next, let's look at a more complicated example. How about 8:13 am until 4:07 pm? We convert the pm time to 24-hour clock format as before and write down the subtraction: 16: 07−8: 138: −06??? Not a valid time.\small \begin{array}{rrrrr} 16:&\!\!\!\!\!07&\\ -8:&\!\!\!\!\!13&\\ \hline 8:&\!\!\!\!\!-06 & \textit{\tiny ??? Not a valid time.} \end{array}16:−8:8:0713−06??? Not a valid time. On this occasion, however, if we try to do the subtraction on the minutes' column, we would end up with minus 6. In this case, we need to convert an hour from the hours' column to 60 minutes in the minutes' column so we can get a positive value for the time difference. Here is what the new manual subtraction looks like: 15:67−8:137:54\small \begin{array}{rrrrr} 15:67\\ -8:13\\ \hline 7:54 \end{array}15:67−8:137:54 So 16 hours became 15 hours, and 7 minutes became 67 minutes, when we added the 60 minutes, carried over from the hours' column. Now we can do the subtraction for the hours Finally, if you want to calculate a time difference from one day to the next, you would need to add a day column and carryover 24 hours (as it is a day in the future), adding it to the hours column of the first time. For example, to find the duration between 4:07 pm until 8:13 am the next morning, you would do: 1 day 8:13→ 32:13−0 day 16:07 −16:0716:06\small \begin{array}{rrrrr} 1 \! &\!\textrm{day} \!\!& 8:13 & \rightarrow &\!\! 32:13\\ -0 \!&\! \textrm{day}\!\! & 16:07 & &\!\! -16:07 \\ \hline &&&& 16:06 \end{array}1−0dayday8:1316:07→32:13−16:0716:06 So for some clock times, calculating the duration between two times is a little tricky, so it might be better to use our calculator instead! FAQHow do I calculate time duration?To calculate the time duration between two times:
How do I write time duration?There is no set way to write time duration. If you need to write the time in shorthand, then the How many minutes we have in 1 day?A day is equal to 1440 minutes.
How long is the hour?There are 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in a day.
How many hours is 9 to 5?If you're also wondering "how many hours am I working?" and you are on a 9AM to 5PM job, then the question is how many hours is 9 to 5. The answer is exactly eight hours.
How do you calculate how much time has passed?The formula for calculating elapsed time is elapsed time = end time – start time. Subtract the minutes and hours separately. For example to calculate the elapsed time between 12:10 and 16:40, subtract 12:10 from 16:4.
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