An hour is a unit of time. The hour is not the basic unit of the international system of time units (the basic unit of the international system of time units is seconds), but an auxiliary unit of time coordinated with the basic unit of the international system of units.

Except leap second, one hour is generally equal to 3600 seconds, or 60 minutes, or 1/24 days. The time of human daily life is generally measured in hours. For example, the time in a day, for example, 8 am, is the eighth hour in a day.

The origin of "hour"

In ancient China, time was measured by the method of "dripping water from a copper pot", and day and night were divided into twelve hours. One hour is equivalent to two hours of western clocks. When clocks and watches were introduced to China from the west, people called an hour "striking time" in China and a new hour "striking time" in the west. In fact, the concept of "time" in ancient China is similar to today's.

For example, "The Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty and the Seventh Calendar" records: "The sun is covered to the left at the equator for one hour every fifteen degrees." 360÷ 15=24, so the "hour" here is basically equivalent to our concept of time today. Later, with the popularity of clocks and watches, the word "Da Shi" gradually disappeared, and "Shi" has been used to this day.