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.

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

About the newton

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.

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

Newton conversion chart

1 newton expressed in every other force unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• kilonewton (force)
• meganewton (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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