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Converting units of time

Learn to convert hours, minutes, and seconds. Created by Sal Khan.

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Video transcript

We have multiple lengths of time here, and they're measured in minutes. So what we want to do is say, well, what's an equivalent number of seconds? And so the first one is pretty straightforward. 1 minute is equal to 60 seconds. By definition, a second is 1/60 of a minute. But what about 5 minutes? Well, we could try to visualize that. If 1 minute-- so let's say that is 1 minute-- if that is equal to 60 seconds, then 5 minutes-- let's just make five copies of this. So that's 1, 2, minutes, 3, minutes, 4 minutes, and then 5 minutes. So you see that 5 minutes would be 5 times 60 seconds. And 5 times 60 is 300. So here you have so this is going to be 5 times 60, which is equal to 300 seconds. So what about 10 minutes? Well, same idea. 10 times 60 is 600 seconds. And what about 60 minutes? Well, 60 minutes or 60 seconds per minute times 60 minutes is equal to 3,600 seconds. So that's interesting. Let's take things a little bit further other. Let's convert between hours, minutes, and seconds. So let's start off with something that's a little bit more straightforward. Let's say that we have 1 hour. Well, we know by definition 1 hour is equal to 60 minutes. And how many seconds is 60 minutes equal to? Well, we just figured that out. 60 minutes times 60 seconds per minute gets us to 3,600 seconds. Now, what about 2 hours? Well, it would be the same exact idea. 60 minutes per hour, if I have 2 hours, it's going to be 2 times 60. 2 hours times 60 minutes per hour gets us to 120. Well, how many seconds is that going to be? Well, there's a couple of ways you could think about it. You could take 120 minutes times 60 seconds per minute. Or you could say 2 hours times 3,600 seconds per hour. So let's do it that way. So two 2 times 3,600 seconds per hour gets us to 7,200 seconds. Now, what if we were to say 10 hours? Well, once again, 10 times 60, 10 hours times 60 minutes per hour would get us to 600 minutes. And if we want to think in terms of seconds, 10 hours times 3,600 seconds per hour gets us to-- well, it's going to be 3,600 tens, which would be 36,000, or 10 times 36 hundred, or 10 times 3,600.