Before we answer how many seconds are in a year, we need to understand each of the time measures we’ll need to work through to reach the answer.
One year is made up of 12 months, or 365 days. Within each day, we have 24 hours, each containing 60 minutes. Within each minute, you’ll find 60 seconds.
So, the maths problem that we need to answer to solve this is as follows:
365 × 24 × 60 × 60
Now, if we pop those numbers into our calculator, we’ll find 31,536,000 seconds in a year! That’s quite a lot, so maybe you shouldn’t sit down and try to count all of them.
How many seconds are in a leap year?
Of course, that isn’t always going to be our final answer. For example, in a leap year, we have 366 days! So, we need to add an extra 24 × 60 × 60. So, in a leap year, there’s an additional 86,400 seconds, meaning the whole year will have 31,622,400 seconds.