How many times do a clock’s hands overlap in a day?

Depends on the clock. How many hands? How many hands must coincide to count as an overlap? Hour and minute or sweep second also? And of course, there are clocks without hands. And define "day" -- sunrise to sunset, or 24 hours. Or stellar, mean solar or sidereal days? On which planet? (gads, never ask an academic anything!)

Assuming a standard office clock with two hands, a 24 hour earth day, 23.

This sounds remarkably like the old engineering oral exam question: "Describe roll, pitch and yaw with your hands in your pockets".

It's going to depend on several things:

1. Does the clock have two hands, or three? Are we overlapping all three if there's a second hand, or any combination of two?

2. Is there a toddler in the house playing with the clock? If so, the longer the toddler plays with the clock, the less likely that the hands will overlap, because they'll be broken off.

3. Is it keeping standard, or military time? 12 hours, or 24?

4. Is the clock keeping accurate time? Even if the hands overlap 22 times on a 12 hour clock on a 24 hour day, a slow battery can bring that number down.

Good luck on the interview!

Midnight, 1:05, 2:10, 3:15, etc. - or - every 65 minutes.

In a 24 hour day, there are 1440 minutes. If I divide that by 65, I get 22 times.

The only hour it doesn't is the 11 o'clock hour. It crosses at 10:50 and noon (midnight)

24 times because each minute represented as a whole number on a clock overlaps the hour. For example: 12:00 am, 1:05 am, 2:10 am, 3:15 am, 4:20 am, 5:25 am, 6:30 am, 7:35 am, 8:40 am, 9:45 am, 10:50 am, 11:55 am, 12:00 pm, 1:05 pm, 2:10 pm, 3:15 pm, 4:20 pm, 5:25 pm, 6:30 pm, 7:35 pm, 8:40 pm, 9:45 pm, 10:50 pm, and 11:55 pm are the overlapped times.

correct answer is 23 times

once an hour, 24