What is second?
The second is the SI base unit of time. It is used globally in science, engineering, computing, and everyday life, and is the foundation upon which all other time units are built.
Real-world uses
The second is the SI base unit of time, fundamental to all scientific measurement, computing clock cycles, athletic timing, and GPS satellite synchronization. Everyday timekeeping, cooking timers, and traffic light cycles all rely on seconds.
History
The concept of dividing the day into 86,400 parts dates to ancient Babylonian and Egyptian timekeeping. Since 1967, the SI second has been defined as 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation from a caesium-133 atom.
Common mistakes
Assuming a second has always been 1/86,400 of a day. The modern SI second is defined by caesium atom vibrations and is independent of Earth's rotation, which varies slightly due to tidal friction.
What is week?
A week is a unit of time equal to 7 days. It is the standard cycle for work schedules, recurring events, sports seasons, and planning in most cultures worldwide.
Real-world uses
Weeks structure work schedules, school timetables, pregnancy tracking (40 weeks), and agile software development sprints. Pay periods are often weekly or biweekly, and epidemiologists report disease incidence in weekly intervals.
History
The seven-day week has ancient origins, adopted by the Babylonians and later by the Romans, who named days after celestial bodies. It became entrenched in Western culture through the Jewish Sabbath tradition and was formalized in the Roman calendar.
Common mistakes
Assuming a month is exactly 4 weeks—most months are 4 weeks plus 2 or 3 days. Also, different cultures start the week on different days (Sunday in the US, Monday in ISO 8601 and most of Europe).
When is this conversion used?
Converting second to week is useful in the time domain when comparing values across different measurement standards or applying formulas that require a specific unit.
Worked examples
1 second = 0.00000165 week
1 week = 604,800 second
How to convert second to week
To convert second to week, multiply the value by 0.00000165.
To convert week back to second, multiply by 604,800.
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: second to week
| second | week |
|---|---|
| 0.1 | 1.653439e-07 |
| 0.5 | 8.267196e-07 |
| 1 | 0.00000165 |
| 2 | 0.00000331 |
| 5 | 0.00000827 |
| 10 | 0.00001653 |
| 25 | 0.00004134 |
| 50 | 0.00008267 |
| 100 | 0.00016534 |
| 250 | 0.00041336 |
| 500 | 0.00082672 |
| 1,000 | 0.00165344 |
Common values
| second | week | |
|---|---|---|
| Blink of an eye | 0.3 second | 4.960317e-07 week |
| Average pop song | 210 second | 0.00034722 week |
| Feature film | 7,200 second | 0.01190476 week |
| One work day (8 hrs) | 28,800 second | 0.04761905 week |
| One calendar year | 31,536,000 second | 52.14285714 week |
Available Time units
More second conversions
- Convert second to minute
- Convert second to hour
- Convert second to day
- Convert second to week
- Convert second to year (365 d)
- Convert second to millisecond
- Convert second to microsecond
- Convert second to nanosecond
- Convert second to century (100 yr)
Assumption: year is defined as 365 days and century values are approximate.