Time Converter
Convert seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years.
Result
0
Base Unit
Relative Value
*Diagram shows values relative to the selected base unit (Second).
Unit Information
What are Nanoseconds (ns)?
A nanosecond is one billionth of a second (10⁻⁹ s). It's an incredibly short duration used in physics and computing to measure things like CPU clock cycles, RAM access times, and the propagation of light over short distances.
What are Microseconds (µs)?
A microsecond is one millionth of a second (10⁻⁶ s). This unit is common in electronics for measuring signal timings and in scientific experiments involving high-speed phenomena.
What are Milliseconds (ms)?
A millisecond is one thousandth of a second (10⁻³ s). It's a common unit for measuring human reaction times, network latency (ping), and the duration of audio and video frames.
What are Seconds (s)?
The second is the SI base unit of time. It was once defined by the Earth's rotation but is now precisely defined by the atomic oscillations of cesium-133, making it a stable foundation for all other time measurements.
What are Minutes (min)?
A minute is a unit of time equal to 60 seconds. It is a fundamental unit for everyday timekeeping, scheduling, and expressing short to medium durations.
What are Hours (h)?
An hour is a unit of time equal to 60 minutes or 3,600 seconds. It is conventionally reckoned as 1/24th of a day and is central to daily life and scheduling.
What are Days (d)?
A day is a unit of time representing the approximate period it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation on its axis, defined as 24 hours.
What are Weeks (wk)?
A week is a standard time unit equal to 7 days. It is a common cycle for organizing schedules, work, and social activities.
What are Months (average, mo)?
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately 1/12th of a year. Its length varies from 28 to 31 days. For this converter, an average month of 30.44 days is used for consistency.
What are Years (average, yr)?
A year is the time it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit around the Sun. For conversion purposes, an average year (Gregorian) is 365.25 days to account for leap years.
Formulas
1 minute = 60 seconds
This is a standard time conversion.
1 hour = 60 minutes = 3600 seconds
This is a standard time conversion.
1 day = 24 hours
This is a standard time conversion.
1 week = 7 days
This is a standard time conversion.
1 year (avg) ≈ 365.25 days
An average year includes the effect of leap years.
1 second = 1000 milliseconds
One second contains one thousand milliseconds.
Key Reference Points
- The blink of an eye is about 100-400 milliseconds.
- An average human heartbeat is about 60-100 beats per minute (at rest).
- A typical feature film is around 90-120 minutes long.
- There are 86,400 seconds in a standard day.
- A typical university semester lasts about 15 weeks.
- A light-nanosecond is the distance light travels in 1 ns (about 30 cm).
- The half-life of Carbon-14 is approximately 5,730 years.
- The age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years.
- The age of the Universe is estimated to be about 13.8 billion years.
- It takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for light from the Sun to reach Earth.
Did You Know?
To keep Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) close to mean solar time, 'leap seconds' are occasionally added. This is because the Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down, albeit very slightly. However, the practice of adding leap seconds is controversial and there are plans to discontinue it by 2035.
Modern timekeeping relies on atomic clocks, which use the resonant frequency of atoms (like cesium or rubidium) to measure time with incredible accuracy. They are crucial for GPS, telecommunications, and scientific research.
A solar day (what we usually mean by 'day') is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once relative to the Sun (~24 hours). A sidereal day is the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once relative to distant stars, and is about 4 minutes shorter than a solar day.
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, time can pass at different rates for different observers. This 'time dilation' effect means that time moves slower for an observer who is moving at high speed or is in a strong gravitational field. This is a measurable effect for GPS satellites.
Our division of an hour into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds comes from the ancient Babylonians, who used a sexagesimal (base-60) numbering system. This system is also the reason a circle has 360 degrees.
In physics, Planck time (approximately 5.39 × 10⁻⁴⁴ seconds) is the smallest theoretically meaningful unit of time. It's the time it would take a photon traveling at the speed of light to cross a distance equal to the Planck length.
Geologists use a time scale divided into eons, eras, periods, and epochs to describe the vast history of the Earth, spanning billions of years.
In nuclear physics, the half-life is the time required for half of the radioactive atoms in a sample to undergo decay. It's a fundamental unit for measuring the stability of isotopes.
A 'fortnight' is a unit of time equal to 14 days (or two weeks). The word derives from the Old English term 'fēowertīene niht', meaning 'fourteen nights'.
The speed of a computer processor is measured by its clock frequency in Hertz. A 3 GHz processor has a clock cycle time of about one-third of a nanosecond. Every basic operation takes a certain number of these tiny time slices.
A galactic year, or cosmic year, is the time it takes for our Solar System to orbit once around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. This is estimated to be about 225 to 250 million years.
The average human reaction time to a visual stimulus is about 250 milliseconds (a quarter of a second). For an auditory stimulus, it's slightly faster, around 170 milliseconds.
A 'jiffy' is an informal term for a very short period of time. In physics, it's sometimes defined as the time it takes for light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum, which is about 33.3 picoseconds.
The Svedberg (S) is a unit of time used in ultracentrifugation, corresponding to 10⁻¹³ seconds. It measures the rate at which particles sediment in a centrifuge.
During the French Revolution, a system of 'decimal time' was briefly introduced. It divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each with 100 decimal minutes, and each minute with 100 decimal seconds. It did not catch on.
In nuclear physics, a 'shake' is an informal unit of time equal to 10 nanoseconds (10⁻⁸ seconds). It's roughly the time it takes for a single neutron to cause a fission event in a nuclear chain reaction.
The seven-day week has been in use for thousands of years, with likely origins in ancient Babylonia, where seven was a sacred number corresponding to the seven visible celestial bodies (the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn).
It takes light approximately 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth, 1.3 seconds to travel from the Moon to the Earth, and 4.2 years to travel from the nearest star (Proxima Centauri).