What is hour?
An hour is a unit of time equal to 60 minutes. It is the standard unit for time-of-day references, work schedules, travel durations, and billing periods across most global contexts.
Real-world uses
Hours are the primary unit for work schedules, flight durations, parking meters, and time zone offsets. Labour laws define maximum working hours, and electricity billing is based on kilowatt-hours of consumption.
History
The concept of dividing the day into 24 hours dates to ancient Egypt, where daylight and night were each split into 12 parts. These "hours" varied in length seasonally until mechanical clocks standardized equal hours in medieval Europe.
Common mistakes
Converting hours to minutes by multiplying by 100 instead of 60. Also, confusing 12-hour and 24-hour time formats—"12:00 AM" is midnight, not noon, which frequently causes scheduling errors.
What is minute?
A minute is a unit of time equal to 60 seconds. It is universally used for scheduling, cooking, fitness tracking, and expressing short durations in everyday life.
Real-world uses
Minutes structure daily life through meeting schedules, cooking times, exercise intervals, and transportation timetables. Medical professionals measure heart rate in beats per minute and respiratory rate in breaths per minute.
History
The minute comes from the Latin "pars minuta prima" (first small part), referring to the first division of the hour into 60 parts. This sexagesimal division originated with the ancient Babylonians around 2000 BCE.
Common mistakes
Using "m" as an abbreviation for minutes, which conflicts with metres. The correct abbreviation is "min." Also, performing arithmetic on time without accounting for the base-60 system (e.g., 1.5 hours is 1 hour 30 minutes, not 1 hour 50 minutes).
When is this conversion used?
Converting hour to minute is useful in the time domain when comparing values across different measurement standards or applying formulas that require a specific unit.
Worked examples
1 hour = 60 minute
1 minute = 60 second
How to convert hour to minute
To convert hour to minute, multiply the value by 60.
To convert minute back to hour, multiply by 0.01666667.
Measurement standards
The SI second is defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom, maintained by the BIPM and national metrology institutes worldwide.
Did you know?
Earth's rotation is gradually slowing due to tidal friction with the Moon. To keep atomic time aligned with solar time, "leap seconds" have been inserted 27 times since 1972 — though they are scheduled to be abolished by 2035.
Quick reference: hour to minute
| hour | minute |
|---|---|
| 0.1 | 6 |
| 0.5 | 30 |
| 1 | 60 |
| 2 | 120 |
| 5 | 300 |
| 10 | 600 |
| 25 | 1,500 |
| 50 | 3,000 |
| 100 | 6,000 |
| 250 | 15,000 |
| 500 | 30,000 |
| 1,000 | 60,000 |
Common values
| hour | minute | |
|---|---|---|
| Blink of an eye | 0.00008333 hour | 0.005 minute |
| Average pop song | 0.05833333 hour | 3.5 minute |
| Feature film | 2 hour | 120 minute |
| One work day (8 hrs) | 8 hour | 480 minute |
| One calendar year | 8,760 hour | 525,600 minute |
Available Time units
More hour conversions
- Convert hour to second
- Convert hour to minute
- Convert hour to day
- Convert hour to week
- Convert hour to year (365 d)
- Convert hour to millisecond
- Convert hour to microsecond
- Convert hour to nanosecond
- Convert hour to century (100 yr)
Assumption: year is defined as 365 days and century values are approximate.