Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

It's my second day in Physics class in Gr. 11, and I'm lost in this "time" section of this unit. We were given textbook questions and I just can't seem to understand how to solve it. Here is the question I can't seem to solve:

Convert the following times into seconds (s) and write in standard form:

d) 2 hours 52 min 59 s, the time for Concord to fly from London to New York

It's my second day in Physics class, so please provide an explanation that isn't confusing or step by step process on how to solve for this. Even when my friends explain it to me, I don't understand, I'm a slow learner but I'm determined to learn.

Hi DaRafster,
I am very sorry to hear that you are struggling with this problem. Unfortunately, this is not a forum for homework help.
Please try google or other similar search engine (try the search term "time conversion to seconds") and I think you will find the explanations that you are looking for.

Best of luck with your new school year!
Willey

Thanks for the reply,

The stuff on Google I just don't understand, as I said, I'm a slow learner. Is it possible just to give me an example question and solve it step by step? Using that info, I can find an answer to my textbook question by myself, is this fine? If not, I completely understand. I'm just falling behind in Physics class, and I'm just looking for perhaps a simple formula.

Thanks

Hi DaRafster,
I am sorry that I didn't see your post until now.
If you use the search term as discussed in the previous post, the first thing that should come up are a few examples. Let's look at #2. 45 minutes is 45 minutes * (60 seconds / 1 minute) = 45 * 60 seconds = 2700 seconds.

What you are doing is called dimensional analysis and you are trying to match the "terms" based on the following definition:
- 1 hour = 60 minutes. (1 hr / 60 minutes)
- 1 minute = 60 seconds.

So, when you have 2 minutes, you have 120 seconds (2 minutes * 60 seconds / 1 minutes) (The minutes "cancels" each other and you end up with seconds as your final unit.)

Similarly, if you have 2 hours, the first thing you'd want to do is to convert to minutes. After that you can convert the minutes you just found to seconds. So:
2 hours * (60 minutes / 1 hour) = 120 minutes
120 minutes * (60 seconds / 1 minute) = 7200 seconds.

I hope that make more sense.
Good Luck!
Willey