3 hours and 15 minutes
============
Calculate the difference between the start and the end times.
The show started at 12:30 PM and ended at 4:15 PM.
Here are the steps to find out the duration:
1. Calculate the number of hours from the start time to the end time without including minutes.
2. Calculate the number of minutes from the start time to the end time.
3. If the end time minutes are less than the start time minutes, we will need to adjust the hours and minutes to get the correct duration.
Step 1:
From 12:30 PM to 4:00 PM, there are 3 hours and 30 minutes. But, to omit the minutes for now, we'll just count whole hours. From 12:00 PM (noon) to 4:00 PM is 4 hours. So starting from 12:30 PM means we have 4 hours minus half an hour, which gives us 3 hours and 30 minutes, but we will consider only the whole hours temporarily – so we have 3 hours.
Step 2:
Now let's look at the minutes. Since the show ended at 4:15 PM and we counted only whole hours up to 4:00 PM, we now need to add the 15 minutes from 4:00 PM to 4:15 PM to our calculation.
Step 3:
We initially had 3 hours (from Step 1) and we now have 15 minutes from Step 2.
So, the duration of the circus show is 3 hours and 15 minutes.
