Think of the word convert as meaning change, whether it is a person who adopts a new belief, or a changing action, such as when you convert dollars into euros. Many times we can catch a word's meaning by looking at its origins. In this case, the Latin con means around, while vertere means turn..
Maple sap runs best when it freezes at night (e.g. in the high 20-degrees Farenheit range) and then warms up above freezing the next day (in the range of 40-degrees Farenheit and hotter). If it stays warm at night and warm during the day or if it freezes at night but barely goes above freezing the next day, sap does not flow as well or hardly at all.
You also need a 5 gallon bucket to collect the sap with and a large volume pan to cook down the sap with and a pan like a 9 x 13 or larger cake pan to do the final cooking. Any kind of maple tree can be used. My husband is thinking about tapping our red maple this year. I forgot to mention about sap/syrup ratio: with a sugar maple tree, the ratio is 32 gallons to 1 which means you need 32 gallons of sap to cook 1 gallon of syrup. If you use other maple trees, the ratio gets higher, more sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. After you cook it down and have strained it through many layers of cheesecloth, you don't have anything else to do.