Barye (Ba)

CGS & old metricHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

Exactly 0.1 pascal, the CGS unit of pressure (one dyne per square centimeter).

1 barye = 0.1 pascals (exactly).

About the barye

Tiny by everyday standards, the barye is the pressure unit of the centimeter-gram-second system. It is one dyne of force spread over one square centimeter, which works out to one gram per centimeter per second squared, or exactly 0.1 pascal. The same quantity has also been called a microbar, and older texts used other spellings and variants such as bary, barad and barrie.

Because of those names the barye is easy to confuse with the bar. In older usage the plain word bar sometimes meant one dyne per square centimeter, particularly in acoustics, a usage now regarded as incorrect. The modern bar is a million baryes, or 100,000 pascals. The barye fits the family of CGS units laid out after the 1873 British Association committee recommended the centimeter, gram and second, and it sits beside the dyne and the erg. It now survives mainly in older physics and acoustics literature. NIST lists the same value as dyne per square centimeter.

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

Barye conversion chart

1 barye expressed in every other pressure unit:

More CGS & old metric units

• technical atmosphere (pressure)
• erg (energy)
• kilogram-force meter (energy)
• erg per second (power)
• kilogram-force (force)
• gram-force (force)
• dyne (force)
• tonne-force (force)

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