What Is Week?
A week is a unit of time. One week is always seven days in a row. People use weeks to plan their schedules for school, work, sports and many other activities.
Definition
A week is a fixed block of time that contains exactly seven days. It usually starts on a certain day like Sunday or Monday and ends after seven full days.
In math or science, you can treat a week as a basic time unit and convert it to other units like days, hours or minutes.
Key points.
- 1 week equals 7 days
- 1 week equals 168 hours
- Weeks repeat again and again to form months and years
History / Origin
The idea of a seven day week is very old. It started thousands of years ago in ancient cultures.
- Babylonian astronomers watched seven bright objects in the sky. The Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. They linked these to seven days.
- Jewish and later Christian and Islamic traditions used a seven day cycle with one day of rest or worship.
- The Roman Empire first had different time cycles but slowly accepted the seven day week.
- Over many centuries, this seven day pattern spread to most of the world.
Today almost every country uses the seven day week in calendars, even if they have different religions or local customs.
Symbol & Abbreviation
The full word is week. Common short forms are.
- wk this is widely used in writing and schedules
- w sometimes used in math and science formulas for weeks
- wks used as a short form for the plural weeks
Examples.
- 2 wk means 2 weeks
- t = 3 w means time equals 3 weeks
Current Use Around the World
The seven day week is used almost everywhere on Earth. It appears in calendars, business plans, TV schedules, school timetables and work contracts.
Some common uses.
- Work and school. Many people work or study five days a week and rest for two days called the weekend.
- Events and services. Classes, clubs and bus or train schedules are often planned by the week.
- Health and fitness. Exercise plans, diets and medicine routines are often set by weeks.
- Business and money. Companies report weekly sales or weekly work hours.
The starting day of the week can be different.
- In the United States and some other places, the week often starts on Sunday.
- In most of Europe and in the ISO international standard, the week starts on Monday.
Example Conversions
Here are simple conversions using 1 week equals 7 days.
- Weeks to days.
- 1 week = 7 days
- 2 weeks = 14 days
- 4 weeks = 28 days
- 10 weeks = 70 days
- Weeks to hours.
- 1 week = 7 days × 24 hours per day = 168 hours
- 2 weeks = 336 hours
- 3 weeks = 504 hours
- Weeks to minutes.
- 1 week = 168 hours × 60 minutes per hour = 10,080 minutes
- 0.5 week half a week = 5,040 minutes
- Weeks to seconds.
- 1 week = 10,080 minutes × 60 seconds per minute = 604,800 seconds
- Weeks to months.
- Most months are about 4 to 5 weeks long
- 1 year has 52 weeks plus 1 or 2 extra days
Related Units
The week is one of several common time units. Others include.
- Second the basic unit of time in science
- Minute 60 seconds
- Hour 60 minutes or 3,600 seconds
- Day 24 hours
- Fortnight 2 weeks or 14 days used mainly in British English
- Month usually about 4 and a half weeks based on the calendar
- Year about 52 weeks the time Earth takes to go around the Sun once
Weeks help connect short times like days to longer times like months and years.
FAQs
What is a week exactly?
A week is a fixed period of seven days. No matter where you are in the world, one week always contains seven full days.
Why are there seven days in a week?
The seven day week comes from ancient traditions that linked seven days to seven important sky objects and to religious stories. Over time this system became common worldwide.
Does every country use a seven day week?
Yes, nearly all modern countries use the seven day week in their official calendars, even if they once used different systems in the past.
What day is the start of the week?
It depends on local custom. In many places the week starts on Monday. In some places like the United States, many people think of Sunday as the first day.
How many weeks are in a year?
There are 52 full weeks in a regular year. A normal year has 365 days which is 52 weeks plus 1 extra day. A leap year has 366 days which is 52 weeks plus 2 extra days.
What is a fortnight?
A fortnight is a word that means two weeks or 14 days. It is used mostly in British English and some other English speaking regions.
Can weeks be used in science and engineering?
Yes, but for very exact work scientists prefer seconds, minutes and hours. Weeks are still used when talking about longer periods like project times, experiments or growth over several weeks.
Is a month the same as four weeks?
Not exactly. Four weeks is 28 days. Many months have 30 or 31 days, so a month is usually a little longer than four weeks.