0580

Time, Currency and Conversions

Number

Conversions to know

  • Time does not use the decimal system, so its conversions have to be learned rather than derived
UnitEquals
1 minute60 seconds
1 hour60 minutes
1 day24 hours
1 week7 days
1 year12 months, taken as 365 days
  • This specification treats a year as 365 days unless a question states otherwise
  • Month lengths are needed for date calculations: April, June, September and November have 30 days, February has 28 (29 in a leap year), and the remaining seven have 31

Minutes are not decimals of an hour

  • Sixty minutes make an hour, so a part-hour written as a decimal is a fraction of 60, not of 100
    • 15 minutes is 0.25 h, 30 minutes is 0.5 h, and 45 minutes is 0.75 h
  • Writing 2 hours 30 minutes as 2.30 hours is wrong; it is 2.5 hours