Question

Which equation can be used to find S, the number of seconds in one year?

Answer 1

Number of seconds in a minute is derived as;

$\begin{gathered} 60s=1m \\ \text{Number of minutes in an hour is 60, therefore;} \\ 1hr=60m\times60 \\ \text{Number of hours in 1 day is 24, therefore;} \\ 1day=60m\times60\times24 \\ \text{Number of days in a year is 365, therefore} \\ 1yr=60m\times60\times24\times365 \\ 1yr=31536000 \\ \end{gathered}$

This means there are 31,536,000 seconds in one year.

However to derive an equation to represent this, the right hand side can be re-written in standard form as

$\begin{gathered} 3.1536\times10^7 \\ This\text{ means 1 year is represented by the expression above} \\ \text{Therefore, if a year is represented by the variable x, then it means;} \\ x=3.1536\times10^7 \end{gathered}$

This equation can be used to derive the number of seconds in 1 year, 2 years, half a year, and so on.