02 May

How many minutes in a year? (Answered)

How many minutes in a year? (Answered)

Introduction to a Year:

How many minutes in a year? A year can be defined as the period of time any planetary body may take to complete its one orbit around the sun. Specifically, for the planet Earth, the planet we all inhabit, on average, takes three hundred and sixty-five (365) Earth days to complete its orbit around the sun. A year on Earth can also be specified as a Solar year as it depends on the Earth’s orbit around the sun. When we refer to a year consisting of three hundred and sixty-five plus a quarter day, we can specify it as a Julian year or as a Gregorian year.

Measurement of a Year:

A year is mostly measured in days and months. As discussed earlier, a year consists of three hundred and sixty-five days, and if we talk about months, there are twelve months in a year. When we talk about weeks, there are fifty-two weeks in one Earth year.

A Leap Year:

Although a common year consists of three hundred and sixty-five days, there comes a leap year after almost every four years. An extra day, known as the leap day, is added to February, making it a twenty-nine rather than usually being a twenty-eight-day month.

This leap year is added because Earth does not exactly take three hundred and sixty-five days; it takes three hundred and sixty-five plus a quarter days to complete its orbit around the sun. So, the leap year makes up for the quarter days and is added up as the leap day.

Time:

Time can be defined in various ways. But, in this specific conversation, we will simply define time as the continuous progression of existence. The study of time is called horology.

Measurement of Time:

Time can be measured in hours, minutes, and seconds. However, there are various more units to measure time in very small quantities, such as picoseconds, microseconds, milliseconds, and many more. But in the International System of Units, the base unit measures time in seconds.

We mostly refer to time in terms of hours, seconds, and minutes in our daily life. One Earth Day consists of twenty-four hours, one hour consists of sixty minutes, and one minute consists of sixty seconds.

Minutes in One Year:

Here, we will apply some calculations that will help us find how many minutes are there in one calendar year.

How many minutes in a year? Calculation.

We will perform our calculations by accepting that there are three hundred and sixty-five (365) days in a year, twenty-four hours in a day, and sixty minutes and an hour.

Now:

Days in a year = 365

Hours in a day = 24

Minutes in an hour = 60

Now, we multiply all the above values:

Number of minutes in a year=  Days in a year  X  Hours in a day  X  Minutes in an hour

 =   365 X 24 X 60

          =   525,600 minutes

As our calculation above shows, there are exactly 525,600 (five hundred and twenty-five thousand and six hundred minutes) in one Earth year.

However, the number of minutes in one leap year is different from this one additional day. This can be fixed by multiplying 366 instead of 365. We shall do this as follow:

Number of minutes in a leap year   =   Days in a leap year  X  Hours in a day  X  Minutes in an hour

          =   366  X 24 X 60

          =   527,040 minutes

As it can be seen again that a leap year has exactly 527,040 (five hundred and twenty-seven thousand and forty minutes) in one Earth Leap year.

If we go one step further, we can also calculate the number of seconds in a year. All we will have to do is just multiply the minutes in a year by sixty again. This will be as follow:

Number of seconds in a year   =number of minutes in a year X number of seconds in a minute

= 525,600 X 60

= 31,536,000 seconds

Number of seconds in a leap year   =   number of minutes in a leap year X number of seconds in a minute

= 527,040 X 60

= 31,622,400 seconds