Kilometers Per Minute to Knots (km/min to kn)

1 kilometer per minute equals 32.39740821 knots (rounded).

How to convert kilometers per minute to knots

To convert kilometers per minute to knots, multiply the number of kilometers per minute by 32.39740821. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply knots by 0.03086666667 (rounded).

knots = kilometers per minute × 32.39740821

Example: 10 kilometers per minute = 323.9740821 knots.

About these units

Kilometer Per Minute (km/min)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One kilometer per minute is 60 km/h.

Racehorses and greyhounds give this unit a memorable benchmark. Wikipedia lists the top speed of a thoroughbred racehorse or racing greyhound as about 17 m/s, and multiplying by 60 gives 1,020 meters per minute, or 1.02 km/min. A round figure of one kilometer per minute is therefore 60 km/h, a pace such animals roughly reach in a sprint.

One kilometer per minute equals 1,000 m divided by 60 s, or about 16.67 m/s. Its main appeal is mental arithmetic: a vehicle at 60 km/h covers one kilometer every minute, so distances and times can be read off almost directly. The more common road unit, km/h, only replaced the French myriameter per hour during the nineteenth century, with the compound in use in the United States by 1866.

1 kilometer per minute = 16.66666667 meters per second (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Orders of magnitude (speed); Wikipedia: Kilometres per hour

Knot (kn)

NauticalCurrent unit

One nautical mile per hour, exactly 1.852 km/h. The unit of speed for ships, aircraft and wind.

Knots in a rope really were counted. Before the mid-nineteenth century, sailors threw a weighted wooden board, the chip, off the stern on a line called the log-line. The line carried knots at regular intervals, and a sailor counted how many passed through his fingers while another timed the run with a sandglass. William Bourne's A Regiment for the Sea, printed in 1574, is the first known description, and many ships spaced knots 8 fathoms, about 14.6 meters, apart with a glass of roughly half a minute.

Today a knot is one nautical mile per hour, exactly 1,852 meters per hour, about 1.151 mph or 0.514 m/s. A ship making 1 knot along a meridian covers about one minute of latitude per hour, which is why charts and the unit fit together. It is not an SI unit, and the symbol is kn, though kt is common in aviation. Saying knots per hour is wrong, since that would describe acceleration. The US moved civil aircraft standards to nautical miles and knots in 1969, and winds and currents are also quoted in them.

1 knot = 0.5144444444 meters per second (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Knot (unit); Wikipedia: Chip log; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Related conversions

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