How Long Are 500 Seconds (And Why)?

Exact Answer: 8.333 Minutes

Time is eternal. It is a measure of continuous changes happening around us and in our surroundings. Time waits for no man and keeps on running at its own pace continuously. Because of time, one can easily classify periods as past, present, and future. Without time there would have been no discipline, no measure to set deadlines for a specific task, and all our day-to-day activities would have become extremely difficult.

Seconds, minutes, and hours are the main units of time. The answer to the question of what is the time now will always be different when asked at different periods during a single day. Time never remains constants and goes on without stopping and waiting for anyone. It is the only thing which when once lost can never be brought back.

Seconds is the smallest standard unit of time. It is referred to as the base unit for measuring and calculating time. Seconds are useful not only as a unit of measurement of time but also forms a part of various other measurement units like meters per second for speed and acceleration, cycles per second for frequency, etc

How Long Are 500 Seconds?

The second, abbreviated as a sec, is the base unit of time in the international system of units of measurements of time. Sixty seconds make one minute. The subdivisions of seconds are the millisecond i.e one-thousandth of a second, the microsecond i. one-millionth of a second, and the nanosecond i.e one-billionth of a second.

One second is commonly understood as 1/86400 of a day. There are sixty tick marks on the faces of analog clocks signifying sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour. Digital clocks and watches also have a seconds counter to keep track of the seconds that pass by.

5,00,000 millisecond, 8.333 minutes, 0.139 hours, 0.00578704 day, 0.00082672 week, and 0.000190259 month are all equivalent to 500 seconds. Thus, one can easily express any unit of measurement of time in other units to denote the same time.

It is pertinent for one to remember that 60 seconds make 1 minute, 3,600 seconds make one hour. In total, there are 86,400 seconds in a single day. A week has 6,04,800 seconds whereas a normal year that is not a leap year has 3,15,36,000 seconds.

Why Are 500 Seconds This Long?

A second is a unit of measurement of time that is equal to one-sixth of a minute. A second is also described as the time taken by a cesium 133 atom to perform 9,19,26,31,770 complete oscillations. A brief interval of time can also be described as a second i.e an extremely short moment.

As everyone knows 1 minute is equal to 60 seconds, so by converting 5 minutes into seconds one can compare those two and determine which one out of the two is longer. 500 seconds are longer than 5 minutes as in 5 minutes there are 300 seconds. Therefore, it can be said quite easily that 500 seconds is greater than the value of 5 minutes.

The beauty of units of measurement of time is that one can compare any unit of time measurement with one another by converting any unit to the base unit and comparing them when the units of both are similar.

To convert 500 seconds into minutes one can use the conversion factor of 0.0166667 to get the result as 8.333 minutes. For practical purposes, the final answer obtained after multiplying with the conversion factor is rounded off to get an approximate numerical value. Thus, the recurring digits are approximated to the nearest integer. Hence, it can be said that 500 seconds is approximately equal to 8.333 minutes.

Conclusion

The base unit of time is known as a second. Originally, seconds were determined on the length of the day, but it has now been standardized on the radiation wavelength of cesium 133. An hour is a unit of time equal to 60 minutes or 3,600 seconds whereas a minute is equal to 60 seconds. Thus, 500 seconds is equivalent to 8.333 minutes or 0.139 hours.

References

1. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/TR037i002p00213
2. https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/PRICE.pdf