Days to seconds

One day is 86,400 seconds, and this shows the working rather than just the answer. Nothing you type here leaves your browser — it is worked out on your own device, so there is nothing to send and nothing to log.

The factor

One day is 86,400 seconds. That is the whole of the conversion: multiply by it, and nothing else happens.

And it is exact

Not rounded, not measured, not a convention that might be revised. The factor above is the definition, so an answer from it is as exact as the number you typed.

The day is exactly 86,400 seconds. A real solar day wanders by a millisecond or two.

The number in your head

Most people use 86,000 for this, which is the factor to two significant figures. It is low by 0.463% — 4.63 seconds too few in every thousand, and 46.3 in every ten thousand.

Going the other way

The reverse is not this sum backwards in your head. It is a different factor, 0.000011574074, and dividing by one is not the same as multiplying by a rounded version of the other.

Rounded, the way back is 0.0000116, which is high by 0.224%. So the two roundings do not cancel: go out and back with both and you do not land where you started.

How many of those decimals mean anything

The box above will give you ten decimal places because it can. Whether they mean anything is decided by your measurement, not by the arithmetic.

If you measured to the nearest day, your figure is already uncertain by half of one — so the answer is uncertain by about 43,200 seconds, and every digit past that is decoration. Quoting 106,665.984 when you measured with a tape is claiming a precision the tape never had.

Where these two sit

Days and seconds both measure time, which is why they can be converted at all. A conversion between families — a length into a weight — is not a conversion, it is a question with a missing quantity in it.

The unit converter pairs days with hours rather than with seconds, because that is the conversion people ask for most. This page exists because a good many ask for this one instead.

Other conversions from days

minutes · years (Julian) · hours · weeks · milliseconds

Where to go next