Revolutions Per Minute to Terahertz (rpm to THz)

1 revolution per minute equals 1.666666667×10⁻¹⁴ terahertz (rounded).

1 revolution per minute = 1.666666667×10⁻¹⁴ terahertz

How to convert revolutions per minute to terahertz

To convert revolutions per minute to terahertz, multiply the number of revolutions per minute by 1.666666667×10⁻¹⁴. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply terahertz by 60,000,000,000,000.

terahertz = revolutions per minute × 1.666666667×10⁻¹⁴

Example: 10 revolutions per minute = 1.666666667×10⁻¹³ terahertz.

About these units

Revolution Per Minute (rpm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One 60th of a hertz. The unit for engine, motor and turntable speeds.

Records gave rpm its fame. The 78 rpm speed was not chosen for a clear engineering reason; Wikipedia says it apparently happened to be the speed of one of the early machines, and the Gramophone Company formally set it as a recording standard in 1912. Columbia unveiled the 33 and a third rpm LP on 21 June 1948, and RCA Victor released the 45 rpm single in February 1949, starting a period called the War of the Speeds.

One rpm equals one sixtieth of a hertz, so a disc at 60 rpm turns at 1 Hz. The SI does not recognise rpm as a unit, preferring hertz or radians per second, and r/min is the usual symbol in standards. Typical examples are a modern car engine idling at about 750 to 900 rpm, consumer hard drives at 7,500 to 10,000 rpm, power-generation turbines at 3,000 or 3,600 rpm, and uranium centrifuges of the Zippe type at 100,000 rpm or more.

1 revolution per minute = 0.01666666667 hertz (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Revolutions per minute; Wikipedia: Phonograph record

Terahertz (THz)

Metric (SI)Current unit

10¹² hertz. Infrared radiation lies at tens of terahertz.

A trillion cycles each second is the scale where electronics meets optics. The terahertz, 10 to the power 12 hertz, takes its base unit from Heinrich Hertz, the physicist who gave conclusive proof that electromagnetic waves exist. The IEC established the name hertz in 1935, and the CGPM adopted it in 1960, replacing cycles per second and its multiples such as kilocycles and megacycles.

Radiation between 0.1 and 10 THz, with wavelengths from 3 mm down to 30 micrometres, lies between microwaves and far infrared. For years this stretch was called the terahertz gap, because practical sources and detectors were hard to build. Today it is used for security screening, spectroscopy and imaging, and has been proposed for fast wireless links. Infrared light spans roughly tens of terahertz, and visible light is about 400 to 790 THz.

1 terahertz = 1,000,000,000,000 hertz (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Hertz; Wikipedia: Terahertz radiation; Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (frequency)

Related conversions

See all frequency units.