Meganewton (MN)
One million newtons. Used for rocket thrust.
1 meganewton = 1,000,000 newtons (exactly).
About the meganewton
Rocket launches are where the meganewton shows up most often. The Saturn V is listed at 34.5 MN of thrust at liftoff, a figure that would read as 34,500,000 N if written in plain newtons. The unit is simply the SI multiple 10^6 N, formed with the prefix mega, and the newton itself was named after Isaac Newton when the 9th General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted the name in 1948.
Civil engineers meet it too, since the loads carried by bridge cables, dam gates and building foundations are naturally counted in millions of newtons. It sits above the kilonewton, which Wikipedia notes as the scale of a steam locomotive's tractive effort or a jet engine's thrust, at roughly 130 kN. One meganewton is 1,000 kN, and in the older non-metric units it works out to about 225,000 pounds-force or roughly 102 tonnes-force, using 4.4482 N per pound-force and 9.80665 N per kilogram-force.
Sources: Wikipedia: Newton (unit); Wikipedia: Saturn V; Wikipedia: Pound (force)
Meganewton conversion chart
1 meganewton expressed in every other force unit:
| Unit | 1 meganewton |
|---|---|
| Newtons | 1,000,000 |
| Kilonewtons | 1,000 |
| Pounds-force | 224,808.9431 |
| Kilograms-force | 101,971.6213 |
| Millinewtons | 1,000,000,000 |
| Ounces-force | 3,596,943.09 |
| Grams-force | 101,971,621.3 |
| Poundals | 7,233,013.851 |
| Dynes | 100,000,000,000 |
| Kips | 224.8089431 |
| Tons-force (short) | 112.4044715 |
| Tons-force (long) | 100.3611353 |
| Tonnes-force | 101.9716213 |
| Sthènes | 1,000 |
More Metric (SI) units
- newton (force)
- kilonewton (force)
- millinewton (force)
- meter (length)
- kilometer (length)
- centimeter (length)
- millimeter (length)
- micrometer (length)
- nanometer (length)
- picometer (length)
- decimeter (length)
- hectometer (length)
- decameter (length)
- kilogram (weight & mass)
- gram (weight & mass)
- milligram (weight & mass)
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