Time unit converter

The calculator converts time between seconds, minutes, hours and days. Choose the unit of the time you enter and the unit of the result next to the boxes. A film that lasts 2 hours is 120 minutes long.

How it works

Unlike metres and litres, time is not converted in tens, but in sixties and twenty-fours.

A few typical conversions:

• 2 h = 120 min,
• 90 min = 1.5 h (a football match, not counting half-time),
• 1 day = 86,400 s,
• 1 week = 7 days = 168 h.

Things to watch out for

A decimal number of hours is not the same as hours and minutes. 1.5 h is one hour and 30 minutes, not one hour and 50 minutes, and 2.25 h is 2 hours and 15 minutes. On the other hand, 1 hour 20 minutes is not 1.2 h, but $1+\frac{20}{60}\approx 1.33$ h. The calculator works with decimal numbers, so when converting “hours and minutes”, convert the minutes separately and add them.

Time conversions often come up with energy use: how long an appliance runs and how many kilowatt-hours that comes to can be worked out with the appliance energy use calculator.