How many years is fourteen trillion seconds?

Answer 1

To find this out, you must use the method of unit conversion. You need to convert seconds into years. To do this, you need to work up the chain while canceling out units that you don't need. The first step is to find out how many seconds are in one year.

60 seconds/1 minute * 60 minutes/1 hour * 24 hours/1 day * 365 days/1 year

Notice that all units are just being divided by the same thing. 1 hour = 60 minutes, 1 minute = 60 seconds, etc.

All units will cancel out except seconds (as a unit on the bottom of a fraction will cancel out the unit on the top of an equation and vice versa when multiplying two fractions). Now, you're left with

60 * 60 * 24 * 365 = 31,536,000 seconds/year. Next, divide 14 trillion seconds by 31,536,000 seconds/year

14,000,000,000,000 seconds / 31,536,000 seconds/year = 443.93708 years

Note: the seconds unit cancels out because it is in the numerator of the equation. You take seconds/year, flip it (into year/seconds), and multiply the numerator (top) with it, which cancels out seconds on the top leaves just years.