Hours to Minutes Calculator (Time)

Whether you're converting days into weeks or weeks into fortnights, this calculator has what you need. And it only takes a matter of seconds (no pun intended) to find your answer.

It'll surprise you how much this calculator will help you make plans, convert decimal times or figure out what your friend meant by "a quarter of an hour."

Plug in your calculations and save yourself a headache.

There are several reasons you should know how to convert hours to minutes and why doing so is helpful. Even if you use a handy calculator like the one we offer, you'll still find the process beneficial in many circumstances.

Planning

Our world has become so action-packed that having smaller quantities may be easier to handle.

Consider our regular 24-hour day and imagine you have 20 things to accomplish in a 10-hour time period. It becomes a hassle planning out when to do everything and moving from task to task.

However, if you convert everything to minutes, it's broken down into a manageable portion. Every 20 minutes, for example, you should complete a certain task.

Using this tactic, you can plan everything from how to make time in your workweek to when everyone should be hiding for your friend's surprise birthday party.

Decimal Time

You've probably seen those wacky numbers. "It took Joe 130.2 hours to get to Mars."

So how many hours and minutes did it take him?

That wacky number is in decimal time. Decimal time divides the day into 10 hours. Each hour is 100 minutes, which consists of 100 seconds.

This system represents time in a decimal-related manner.

Many accounting systems run on a base-10 system. That means when you look at your paycheck, it might say you worked for 8.12 hours. If you want to make sure that's correct, you have to convert hours to minutes

Portions

Finally, knowing how to convert hours to minutes is important for everyday conversation.

If someone says they will see you in half an hour, you must know how many minutes are in an hour to figure out when you'll be seeing them.

Or, of course, you could plug it into that handy calculator we were talking about.

This conversion is so vital it is a part of our language.

Here's a quick breakdown of the basics before we explain how, exactly, you convert hours to minutes or make other conversions in time.

Conversion Factors

These are the equivalents you should know:

• 1 year = 365 days
• 1 day = 24 hours
• 1 hour = 60 minutes
• 1 minute = 60 seconds
• 1 second = 0.0166667 minutes

Conversions

Now we get to where many people become confused. After all, how are you supposed to convert your regular hours into minutes?

It's not as hard as you think!

Hours to Minutes

There are 60 minutes in an hour. To calculate hours into minutes, take the total hours and multiply it by 60:

hours x 60 minutes = minutes

For example, to calculate the number of minutes in 100 hours, we would do the following:

100 hours x 60 minutes = 6,000 minutes

Minutes to Hours

What if you want to calculate how many minutes are in a certain number of hours?Do the opposite!

In this instance, divide the number of hours by 60:

minutes / 60 minutes = hours

To calculate the number of hours in 120 minutes, for example, you would do this:

120 minutes / 60 minutes=2 hours

Decimal Time

But what do you do if you have 3.15 hours and you must convert it to hours and minutes?

Again, we'll deal with that 60-minute rule, and we'll follow the same procedure as when we're converting hours to minutes:

If you want to take it a step further, you can discover exactly how many minutes .15 amounts to:

.15 hour x 60 minutes = 9 minutes

Seconds

Now we get to the nitty-gritty. How do you calculate seconds? It follows a similar method.

There are 60 seconds in a minute. To calculate minutes to seconds, you multiply by 60 seconds:

minutes x 60 seconds = seconds

For example:

2 minutes x 60 seconds = 120 seconds

To convert seconds to minutes, things get a bit tricky.

There are 0.0166667 minutes in a second. This must be divided by the total number of seconds.

seconds / 0.0166667 seconds = minutes

Here's a sample problem:

3 minutes/0.0166667 seconds = 180 seconds

Because the 6 in the number of seconds continues for eternity, you can round the decimal up.

Scientists and theologians continue to dispute the origins of time.

Recent progressions in string theory suggest it began well before the Big Bang. Other scientists remain convinced it occurred during that period. And theologians believe time began when God created it.

Regardless of the elusive beginnings of time, historical records have traced the time we use today. In fact, it leads us back to the Sumerians who lived in 3500 BC.

Using a duodecimal base (a base of 12 versus our 10), the base of 60 occurred. Researchers continue to speculate why this happened.

When the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and the cultures fixated on astronomy, the base 60 continued.

It was so linked to the study of astronomy that the Greeks continued to use it after Alexander the Great conquered the area.

The trend disappeared for a time until the Medieval Era, when astronomers applied the 60 base to time. It was used to tabulate the moon's cycles. Thus, the hour came into existence.

Minutes and seconds came much later in the fourteenth century.

Then, mechanical clocks with one hand came along, and two centuries later, astronomers used minutes and seconds to better record the happenings in the sky.

Approximately 5,000 years after the Sumerians introduced the 60 base, it remains an integral part of society.