Factor label method, seconds in a year..?

Question

using the factor label method, determine the number of seconds in a year...

how would I go about doing so??

thanks in advance

Answer 1

I think this is what you mean....

(1 yr)(365 day / 1 yr)(24 hr / 1 day)(60 min / 1 hr)(60 sec / 1 min)

= (365 * 24 * 60 * 60)

= 31,536,000

Answer 2

to use the factor label method, you just line up the facts you know about that measurement and cancel them out to get your answer.

determine the number of seconds in a year

First, lets start with a year. what do we know about a year? well, there are 365 days in 1 year. (not counting leap year).

1 yr  *   (365 days/ 1 yr)  = 365 days

Notice how the word "year" cancels out? Now you are just left with days. now, lets move on to hours. how many hours are there in a day? 24.

365 days * [24 hrs / 1 day] = 365 * 24 = 8760 hrs.

The word "days" cancel out, and your left with "hrs" are your measurement. now, there are 60 mins in 1 hr:

8760 hrs * [60 mins / 1 hr] = 8760 * 60 = 525600 mins

And now we can move on to seconds, which is our goal. there are 60 seconds in 1 minute.

525600 mins * [60sec / 1min] = 525600 * 60 = 31536000 secs.

So your answer should be 31536000 seconds.

I hope that helps!

Answer 3

31,536,000

Answer 4

I would start with 365 days/year or more accurately the average is:

365.25 days/year (Allowing for leap year.)

Now the factor label cancels units as one would cancels variables.

365.25 days/year*(24 hours/ day) = 8766 hours/ year

What was done was we knew 24 hrs =1 day, we wanted to cancel years which was in the denominator, so we multiplies with 24 hrs/ day = 1, rather than 1 day/ 24 hrs = 1 to eliminate the unit year, which was in the denominator.

8766 hours/ year * (60 min/ 1 hour)*(60 sec./ i min.) = 31,557,600 secs./year