Katuns to Hours (katun to h)

1 katun equals 172,800 hours exactly.

1 katun = 172,800 hours

How to convert katuns to hours

To convert katuns to hours, multiply the number of katuns by 172,800. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply hours by 0.000005787037037 (rounded).

hours = katuns × 172,800

Example: 10 katuns = 1,728,000 hours.

Months and years are not constant. This site uses the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days, so one 'year' converts to 365.2425 days, not 365; use 'common year' for exactly 365 days.

About these units

Katun (katun)

MayaHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

20 tuns or 7,200 days (about 19.7 years).

Twenty tuns, or 7,200 days, add up to a katun, which Wikipedia converts to 19.713 tropical years. That is why the unit is described as roughly twenty years, although it falls about three and a half months short of that.

Katuns carried real social weight. Rulers who lived to see four or five of them could take the title of a 4-katun or 5-katun ruler, a kind of age honorific. The end of a katun was marked by ceremonies, and at Tikal large twin pyramid complexes were built to host them. Each katun was also thought to carry its own set of prophecies and associations.

After the Long Count fell out of use in the Postclassic period, the Maya still tracked katuns by the Calendar Round date on which each began, a system known as the Short Count. In the Long Count the katun is the second digit from the left of a typical date, running 0 to 19 before it rolls into the next baktun. The figure of 622,080,000 seconds used here follows from the 7,200 day count.

1 katun = 622,080,000 seconds (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Kʼatun; Wikipedia: Maya calendar; Steve Morse: Mayan Calendar Rules

Hour (h)

Metric (SI)Current unit

60 minutes or 3,600 seconds, one twenty-fourth of a mean solar day.

Egyptian astronomers gave us the twelve. Coffin lids from about 2150 BC show the night divided into exactly 12 intervals, tied to the rising of star groups called decans, and the day was later split into 12 hours with sundials. These were seasonal hours, a twelfth of the daylight, so a summer hour was longer than a winter one. The word itself comes from Greek hora, originally any span of time, through Latin and Old French into English in the 13th century.

Equal hours of 1/24 of a day were probably first proposed by Hipparchus, and mechanical clocks made them the practical choice, since a clock showing seasonal hours had to be readjusted every morning and evening. Today the hour is exactly 3,600 seconds and is a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI. Civil time still bends it a little: UTC hours have lasted 3,601 seconds 27 times since 1972 to keep clocks within 0.9 seconds of the Earth's rotation. In practice we use it for working shifts, travel times and electricity bills measured in kilowatt-hours.

1 hour = 3,600 seconds (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Hour; BIPM: SI Brochure, 9th edition

Related conversions

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