Seconds in a Year

How many seconds are there in a year?

Hint: You don’t need a calculator

24. If you said 12 for January 2nd, February 2nd, etc that’s close, but you forgot about January 22nd, February 22nd and so on. If you are a math whiz and didn’t need a calculator to perform 60 x 60 x 24 x 365, then 31,536,000 works too. If you used 365.25 to account for leap year, then you are a human calculator, but even that’s not entirely accurate due to the leap second. And even accounting for that, it’s only an approximation that there are 365.2422 days in a year.

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77 Comments on "Seconds in a Year"


Whart says
January 25, 2016 @ 19:47

The question was how many (seconds) not (nd’s) in a year so the correct answer is 31,536,000 in a year.


Garima says
February 9, 2016 @ 04:51

A year is having 31 million seconds


Unknown says
February 9, 2016 @ 12:17

S
ome people believe that life is not about how many breaths you take, but instead how many moments take your breath away. What’s for certain is that the time we have is precious. Spend some time today with those you love.

Seconds tick by and turn into minutes. Minutes turn into hours, and hours turn into days. The days turn into years and, before you know it, time has flown by.

Have you ever made a split-second decision? You were going to do X, but then…at the last second…you changed your mind and did Y instead. Maybe it was choosing the path less traveled instead of the wide road. Whatever the reason, mere seconds can be well spent and change lives forever.

Have you ever stopped to consider how many seconds you have? If every second counts, then let’s count the seconds we have. For example, how many seconds do we have in a day? A month? A whole year?

A wise man once said that there are 12 seconds in a year. January 2nd, February 2nd, March 2nd…OK, you get the picture. But those aren’t the seconds we’re talking about! We mean that small unit of time that’s about as long as it takes to say, “one thousand one.”

To figure out how many seconds there are in a year, we’re going to need to know a little math. To convert a certain quantity to a different unit of measure, we need to figure out what is called the conversion factor.

To do this, we need to come up with a ratio — or fraction — that equals one. In the ratio, the conversion factor is a multiplier that gets applied to the larger unit to convert it into the smaller unit through multiplication.

Sound confusing? Don’t worry. A simple example will make things clear. When thinking about how many seconds there are in a year, let’s first figure out the different units of measurement of time involved. We have the second, the minute, the hour, the day, the month and the year.

Let’s start with the largest of these measures: the year. To convert years to the next smallest unit — the month — we have to know how many months are in a year. Since we know there are 12 months in a year, our ratio would be 1:12 (one year:12 months) or 1/12. So, the conversion factor is 12.

If we want to know how many months are in 5 years, we just need to multiply the number of years by the conversion factor. Five years times 12 months/year equals 60 months in 5 years. Easy enough, right?

To figure out even smaller units, you can keep doing multiple conversions to smaller and smaller units. Just make sure that the units you’re using are all the same. For example, there are 24 hours in each day, but not all months have the same number of days. To convert one year to seconds, you’ll need to skip using months and convert to days, hours, minutes and finally seconds.

Each step of the way, you’ll need to compute the conversion factor and then multiply. Here’s what the conversion from one year to seconds would look like:

1 year = 365 days (no, we’re not counting leap years!)

1 day = 24 hours

1 hour = 60 minutes

1 minute = 60 seconds

So…drum roll, please…one year would equal 365 times 24 times 60 times 60 seconds…or 31,536,000 seconds! That’s over 31 million seconds you have to spend over the next year. What will you do with YOUR seconds?

Wonder Words (15)
COUNT
EQUAL
UNIT
SECOND
MINUTE
HOUR
FACTOR
RATIO
FRACTION
MULTIPLIER
MULTIPLICATION
MEASUREMENT
PRECIOUS
CONVERSION
QUANTITY
TAKE THE WONDER WORD CHALLENGE
DID YOU GET IT?
TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Wonder What’s Next?
Better hurry up and enjoy tomorrow’s Wonder of the Day before it gets dark!
Try It Out

Ready to put some of your precious seconds to good use? Check out these fun ways to spend quality time together as a family:

Play some fun Backyard Games! Watch those seconds turn into minutes and then into hours as you play fun games with your friends and family members right in your own backyard. Time spent with friends and family is always time well spent, so find a game that you can all enjoy and play the day away!Playing games isn’t the only way to have a fun time with friends and family. Why not become tourists in your own city? Have you seen all there is to see in your local area? There always seem to be those little places that you never seem to get around to visiting. Find a new place to explore today. Or you could also make a family meal together! Have all family members think of their favorite food that they’d like to share with everyone else. Head out to the grocery store together and get all the supplies you’ll need. When you get home, turn on some music and get cooking in the kitchen. Enjoy your time together. You’ll have a feast you won’t soon forget! After you’re finished eating, why not end the day by having a family reading party in bed?! Bake some cookies, grab a glass of milk and snuggle up together to read some of your favorite stories together.Up for a challenge? Units of time aren’t the only units of measurement that you can learn to convert from smaller to larger units and vice versa. Head to the kitchen and get out a set of measuring cups and spoons. Using these items, experiment on your own to figure out how the units convert from one to another. How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? Feel free to use the Internet to research conversion tables for these units of measurement to determine whether your best guesses were accurate or not.


Mya says
February 10, 2016 @ 08:56

24 January 2nd, January 22nd and so on


Rick says
February 11, 2016 @ 18:28

3.154e+7 seconds are in a year


SATHEESH KUMAR says
February 26, 2016 @ 08:24

how 24


Scotty M says
March 5, 2016 @ 05:11

Whoever said that a light year is not a measure of distance is completely WRONG…………a lightyear is the DISTANCE a particle of light can travel in a year…….light can travel the earth 7.5 x in 1 second


. says
March 25, 2016 @ 00:55

I did 60×60×24×7×4×12 but it equaled 29,030,400


RoEM kINDNESSIAN says
March 30, 2016 @ 01:44

SO EASY ITS 12


Dan says
March 30, 2016 @ 07:46

What about the twenty second?


shurjo says
April 6, 2016 @ 09:44

31 556 926 seconds ha ha


Aditya says
June 15, 2016 @ 10:57

its 315360000 sec


Skyler Coronel says
June 24, 2016 @ 18:33

All of you are wrong

24. If you said 12 for January 2nd, February 2nd, etc that’s close, but you forgot about January 22nd, February 22nd and so on. If you are a math whiz and didn’t need a calculator to perform 60 x 60 x 24 x 365, then 31,536,000 works too. If you used 365.25 to account for leap year, then you are a human calculator.


Hudges says
September 26, 2016 @ 07:08

If the question is as written, then it is, as highlighted by Whart above, literally the number of seconds

“The question was how many (seconds) not (nd’s) in a year so the correct answer is 31,536,000 in a year.”

However, should it be spoken in a quiz, then there are several answers as displayed above, but which could also include the second:
– month of the year
– week of the year
– fortnight of the year
– quarter of the year
– half of the year

Should one become pedantic, one might include second halves of matches; football, rugby etc., so the number could be any one of a wide variety of answers, which probably makes this not a very good question. I know that it is supposed to be a little ambiguous, but it leaves too much room for debate.


isaac ho says
November 13, 2016 @ 23:01

this is the way how you do it
60×60=3600
[3600×24=86400 which is how many seconds in a day]
86400×365=31536000
86400×366=31622400
.


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