If each stripe melted in about an hour, about three hours would have passed when three stripes melt.
What type of conditional is it? I did not find the type of "If past tense, would have perfect".
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4The sentence doesn't look correct to me. I would never say "when three stripes melt", I would say "when three stripes had melted."– stangdonCommented May 14, 2017 at 15:42
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2@stangdon's right. And you won't find this in the "first, second, third conditionals", which are just teaching devices and don't come close to representing the many possible combinations of verbforms and verb constructions which are used in English conditionals. You understand how conditionals work, so throw away the baby rules.– StoneyB on hiatusCommented May 14, 2017 at 15:57
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2 Answers
Here's the "non-conditional" form of what you're saying, as well as a word you really need for it to be clear.
Each stripe melts in about an hour, [therefore] about three hours pass when three stripes melt.
Did three actual stripes melt? Then you say this:
If each stripe melts in about an hour, then about three hours have passed for those melted stripes.
Are we talking about a possibility of stripes melting? Then you say this:
If each stripe melts in about an hour, then about three hours would have passed for those melted stripes.
If you really want to use the when phrase, you should say when all three have melted or when all three would have melted.
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I know it emphasizes only "would have perfect" not "conditional if".– Aung ThuCommented May 14, 2017 at 23:58
I would say a Conditional type 2, with corrections to keep it "grammatically neat".
As a Conditional type 1 we would say: If one stripe melts in an hour, then about three hours will have passed, when three strips have melted.
So, to make the above a Conditional type 2: If one stripe melted in an hour, then about three hours would have passed, when three stripes melted.
(Here we must use would have to signify one action completed before the other: If I had enough materials, I would have finished before 3 pm today. We try to look back from the future 3pm, and pretend we describe the past).
And Type 3: If one stripe had melted in an hour, then about three hours would have passed, when three stripes had melted.
