Kilopascals to Gigapascals (kPa to GPa)

1 kilopascal equals 0.000001 gigapascals exactly.

How to convert kilopascals to gigapascals

To convert kilopascals to gigapascals, multiply the number of kilopascals by 0.000001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply gigapascals by 1,000,000.

gigapascals = kilopascals × 0.000001

Example: 10 kilopascals = 0.00001 gigapascals.

About these units

Kilopascal (kPa)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 pascals. Used for tire pressures, weather reports in many countries and engineering.

Kilopascal is the form of the pascal that most people actually use. The pascal itself is very small, so outside meteorology the kilopascal became the common choice in most fields, and it equals one centibar. Medical elastography reports tissue stiffness in kPa, and Canada reports atmospheric pressure in kPa rather than hectopascals.

A standard atmosphere is 101.325 kPa. In 1982 IUPAC recommended a different reference for chemistry, a standard pressure of exactly 100 kPa, which split the older convention of 1 atm into two competing standards.

Blood pressure shows how the units line up. One mmHg is 0.13332 kPa, and a normal reading is below about 16.0 kPa systolic and 10.7 kPa diastolic, the same thing as the familiar 120 over 80 in millimeters of mercury.

1 kilopascal = 1,000 pascals (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pascal (unit); Wikipedia: Standard atmosphere (unit); Wikipedia: Millimetre of mercury

Gigapascal (GPa)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One billion pascals. Used for the stiffness (Young's modulus) of materials; steel is about 200 GPa.

Blaise Pascal's name was attached to the SI unit of pressure in 1971, when the 14th General Conference on Weights and Measures adopted it for one newton per square metre. A gigapascal is a billion of them, 10^9 Pa, which is a size that makes sense only for solid materials and deep-Earth conditions, not for weather or tyres.

Materials scientists quote stiffness in it. Wikipedia's table of Young's modulus lists structural steel at about 200 GPa and diamond at 1,220 GPa, while geophysicists use gigapascals for tectonic stresses and pressures inside the planet. Atmospheric pressure of about 101,325 Pa is therefore about 0.0001 GPa, and one gigapascal is roughly 145,000 psi or 145 ksi. A gigapascal also equals one thousand megapascals, the unit in which concrete and steel strengths are usually written.

1 gigapascal = 1,000,000,000 pascals (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pascal (unit); Wikipedia: Pounds per square inch

Related conversions

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