Time Converter
Convert between different units of time. Choose your units below for an instant result.
Popular Time Conversions
About Time Conversions
Why time uses a non-decimal system
Unlike length or weight, time uses mixed bases: 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and approximately 365.25 days in a year (accounting for leap years). This system traces back to ancient Babylonian mathematics, which used base-60 (sexagesimal) counting, and has remained largely unchanged for thousands of years.
Computing and nanoseconds
Modern CPUs operate at speeds measured in gigahertz (billions of cycles per second), meaning individual operations take nanoseconds (billionths of a second) or picoseconds. Network latency is measured in milliseconds; human reaction time is roughly 200–300 milliseconds. Understanding these scales helps in software performance optimisation.
Leap years and calendar precision
A calendar year has 365 days, but the Earth actually takes 365.2422 days to orbit the sun. Leap years (adding one day every four years, with corrections for century years) keep the calendar aligned with the astronomical year. A precise tropical year is approximately 31,556,926 seconds.