I had to read this a couple of times to see this was not about time, but is a right triangle problem. If the hour hand is at three, let us consider that a leg of a right triangle, we will consider the hypotenuse as the second hand.
Sketch the picture.
The hypotenuse is 9 cm. the angle is found by:
the (hour hand) is pointing directly at the 12. I expect you mean the minute hand. The angle between the minute hand and the second hand is 25/60*360 = 150 which make the angle between the hour hand and the second hand. 150 -90 =60
so the second hand and the hour hand gives us a right triangle, with a 60 degree angle and a hyp. of 9 cm.
cos 60 = x/9
9 cos 60 =x
x = 4.5 cm
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