Convert Time from Weeks to Seconds (week to s)

What is a Week (week)?

A week is a familiar unit of time, consisting of seven days.

While we commonly think of it as just seven calendar days, it can also be measured as 168 hours, 10,080 minutes, or 604,800 seconds.

The concept of a seven-day week is one of the oldest and most consistent timekeeping methods in human history.

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Why Are There 7 Days in a Week?

Have you ever wondered why a week has exactly seven days?

The tradition dates back thousands of years to the ancient Babylonians. They were skilled astronomers who observed seven celestial bodies moving through the night sky: The Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn.

Believing the number seven held special significance, they structured their calendar in seven-day cycles to honor these celestial bodies.

This system was so practical that it was adopted by neighboring cultures, including the Greeks and Romans, and eventually spread worldwide, becoming the global standard we use today.

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Which Day Starts the Week: Sunday or Monday?

While a week is always seven days long, the day it officially begins depends on the time zone in which you are located.

• Sunday marks the beginning of the week in many nations, such as the United States, Canada, and Japan, due to long-standing religious and cultural traditions.
• The international standard ISO 8601, which designates Monday as the start of the week, is widely used in business and government—especially in Europe—to ensure consistency in global communication.

What is a Second (s)?

Have you ever stopped to think about what a "second" really is?

As the base unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), the second is a fundamental part of our daily lives. But its definition has an intriguing history — from tracking the Sun's movements to measuring the vibrations of a single atom.

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How Is a Second Defined Today? The Atomic Clock Standard

While we used to define a second based on the Earth's rotation around the Sun, that method wasn't precise enough for modern science.

Today, the official definition of a second is based on the incredibly consistent and reliable atomic clock.

So, what does that mean? Officially, one second is the time it takes for a caesium-133 atom to oscillate (or vibrate) exactly 9,192,631,770 times. Think of it as a tiny, perfectly predictable pendulum.

This atomic standard is far more stable than measuring the Earth's rotation, which can vary slightly.

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Why Are There 60 Seconds in a Minute? A Look at Ancient History

The reason we divide minutes and hours into 60 parts dates back thousands of years to the ancient Babylonians. They used a sexagesimal (base-60) numbering system for their advanced mathematical and astronomical calculations.

This practical system was passed down through Greek and Arab scholars and was eventually adopted worldwide for two primary purposes:

• Timekeeping (hours, minutes, and seconds)
• Measuring angles (degrees)

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What Is a Leap Second? Syncing Atomic Time with Earth's Rotation

If atomic clocks are so perfect, why do we sometimes need to adjust them?

The problem is that the Earth's rotation is not perfectly uniform—it can speed up or slow down by tiny fractions of a second.

This causes a slow drift between the time kept by atomic clocks (Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC) and the time based on the Earth's position relative to the Sun.

To fix this, we occasionally add a leap second — an extra second that keeps our clocks aligned with the solar day, so that sunrise and sunset occur when we expect them to.