FORMULABANK

Conversion between seconds, minutes, and hours

$\begin{array}{ccc}\text{hours}& \text{minutes}& \text{seconds}\end{array}$

From hours to minutes or from minutes to seconds: multiply by $60$.
From seconds to minutes or from minutes to hours: divide by $60$.

Note

Always pay attention to decimal numbers when working with hours.

$1.5$ hours is not the same as 1 hour and 50 minutes.

$1.5$ hours means 1 and a half hours, that is, 1 hour and 30 minutes.

The concept of decimal hours

Decimal hours means that time is written as a decimal number. For example, 1 hour and 30 minutes can be written as $1.5$ hours.

$1.5$ hours is 1 and a half hours, which means 1 hour and 30 minutes.

Converting decimal hours to minutes

Here one must multiply the decimal hours by $60$ (because there are 60 minutes in 1 hour).

Example:

$1.5\text{hours}\text{converted to minutes:}$

$1.5\times 60=90$

So this becomes 90 minutes.

Converting minutes to decimal hours

Here one must divide the number of minutes by $60$ (because there are 60 minutes in 1 hour).

Example:

$75\text{minutes converted to decimal hours:}$

$\frac{75}{60}=1.25$

So this becomes 1.25 decimal hours.

Converting decimal hours to hours and minutes

Here one keeps the whole number of hours and then multiplies the decimal part by $60$.

Example:

$1.6\text{hours converted to hours and minutes:}$

$(1.6-1)\times 60=36$

So this becomes 1 hour and 36 minutes.

Converting hours and minutes to decimal hours

Here one keeps the whole number of hours and then divides the minutes by $60$.

Example:

1 hour and 45 minutes converted to decimal hours:

$\frac{45}{60}=0.75$

So this becomes 1.75 decimal hours.

Converting 5000 seconds to hours, minutes, and seconds

First, we find how much time we have in minutes:

$\frac{5000}{60}\approx 83.33\text{minutes}$

To find the number of whole hours, we divide by $60$ (60 minutes in 1 whole hour):

$\frac{83.33}{60}\approx 1.388833$

So we have 1 whole hour.

To find the number of whole minutes, we multiply the part beyond the whole hour by $60$ (since there are 60 minutes in 1 hour). Here the decimal part is $0.388833$.

$0.388833\times 60\approx 23.32998$

So we have 23 whole minutes.

To find the number of seconds, we multiply the part beyond the whole minutes by $60$ (since there are 60 seconds in 1 minute). Here the decimal part is approximately $0.33$.

$0.33\times 60\approx 20$

So we have 20 seconds.

Therefore, in total, 5000 seconds is equal to 1 hour, 23 minutes, and 20 seconds.