One hour is what percentage of one full day (24 hours)?

Difficulty: Easy

Correct Answer: 4.16%

Explanation:


Introduction / Context:
This is a straightforward percentage problem that connects units of time. You are asked to express one hour as a percentage of an entire day. Questions like this are useful for building intuition about fractions and percentages of a whole, and they often appear in aptitude tests in simplified form to test basic numeric understanding and speed.


Given Data / Assumptions:

  • One full day consists of 24 hours.
  • We are interested in comparing 1 hour to the full 24 hours.
  • The answer must be expressed as a percentage.
  • We assume the usual definition that a day has exactly 24 hours.


Concept / Approach:
To find what percent one quantity is of another, we take the ratio of the first quantity to the second and then multiply by 100. In this question, the relevant ratio is 1 hour divided by 24 hours. This ratio is then converted into a percentage by multiplying by 100%. There are no complications such as changing units because both values are already in hours. The concept is simply percentage of a whole.


Step-by-Step Solution:
Step 1: Total time in one day = 24 hours.Step 2: Required fraction = (time considered) / (total time) = 1 / 24.Step 3: To convert this fraction to a percentage, multiply by 100: (1 / 24) * 100%.Step 4: Compute 100 / 24 = 4.1666... approximately.Step 5: Round this to two decimal places to get approximately 4.17%.Step 6: Among the given options, the nearest standard representation is 4.16%.


Verification / Alternative check:
Another way to think about the ratio is to recall that 1/4 is 25%, 1/10 is 10%, and 1/20 is 5%. Since 1/24 is slightly smaller than 1/20, the percentage should be a bit less than 5%. Our computed value of about 4.17% matches this intuition. Also, multiplying 24 by 4.1666... / 100 should give roughly 1, which confirms the correctness of the calculation. Therefore, 4.16% is a valid approximation and matches the option closely.


Why Other Options Are Wrong:
Option 5.6% is greater than 1/20 of a day and would correspond to more than one hour. Option 3.35% is too small and would represent less than the true fraction. Option 6.7% is far too large, representing about 1.6 hours. Option 2.5% is also too small, equal to only 0.6 hours. Among the given options, only 4.16% properly approximates 1/24 of a day as a percentage.


Common Pitfalls:
Some learners mistakenly flip the ratio and compute 24/1 instead of 1/24, leading to nonsensical percentages greater than 100. Others may try to use approximate mental shortcuts without checking their logic and may pick an option that is clearly too high or too low. Another pitfall is forgetting to multiply by 100 when converting the fraction 1/24 into a percentage. Keeping the formula (part / whole) * 100% in mind helps avoid these mistakes.


Final Answer:
One hour is approximately 4.16% of a full day.

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