Dynes to Newtons (dyn to N)

1 dyne equals 0.00001 newtons exactly.

1 dyne = 0.00001 newtons

How to convert dynes to newtons

To convert dynes to newtons, multiply the number of dynes by 0.00001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply newtons by 100,000.

newtons = dynes × 0.00001

Example: 10 dynes = 0.0001 newtons.

About these units

Dyne (dyn)

CGS & old metricTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 10⁻⁵ newtons, the CGS unit of force: one gram-centimeter per second squared.

Dyne derives from the Ancient Greek dynamis, meaning power or force. The name was first put forward in 1873 by a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a group that included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson, the future Lord Kelvin. They were choosing names for dynamical units built on the centimeter, gram and second, and the dyne became the force unit of that system.

By definition it is the force that gives a mass of one gram an acceleration of one centimeter per second squared. That is exactly 10 micronewtons, or 0.00001 newton, so 100,000 dynes make one newton. A kilogram-force is 980,665 dynes. Physicists still meet it in surface tension, where water at 25 degrees Celsius is about 72 dynes per centimeter. The pressure unit that goes with it is the barye, one dyne per square centimeter, and the unit of work is the erg.

1 dyne = 0.00001 newtons (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Dyne; Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 conversion factors

Newton (N)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI unit of force: the force that accelerates one kilogram by one meter per second squared. About the weight of a small apple.

Isaac Newton gave his name to the unit for his second law of motion, force equals mass times acceleration. Metric engineers needed a force unit that fitted the metre-kilogram-second system, and the CGPM standardized one in 1946; the 9th CGPM in 1948 adopted the name newton, with symbol N. Before that, many metric users measured force in kilograms-force, which confuses weight with mass, and CGS users had the much smaller dyne.

One newton is the force that gives a one-kilogram mass an acceleration of one meter per second every second. For scale, a 200-gram apple weighs about 1.96 N on Earth, so a newton is roughly the weight of a small apple. It equals 100,000 dynes and about 0.225 pound-force. Forces in the thousands are written in kilonewtons. Because the newton is built directly from kilograms, meters and seconds, it slots into formulas for pressure, energy and power without any conversion constants.

The newton is the reference unit for force on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Newton (unit); BIPM: 9th CGPM (1948), Resolution 7; Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units

Related conversions

See all force units.