Newton to Celsius (°N to °C)
1 degree Newton equals 3.03030303 degrees Celsius.
How to convert degrees Newton to degrees Celsius
Converting degrees Newton to degrees Celsius is not a simple multiplication, so use the formula below.
degrees Celsius = degrees Newton × 3.03030303
Example: 10 degrees Newton = 30.3030303 degrees Celsius.
Temperature scales have different zero points, so converting is not just multiplication. Differences in degrees convert differently from absolute readings.
About these units
Degree Newton (°N)
A scale devised by Isaac Newton around 1700 in which water freezes at 0° and boils at 33°. It is the ancestor of the modern temperature scales but was never widely adopted.
Isaac Newton described this temperature scale in an unsigned paper titled Scala graduum Caloris, printed in the Philosophical Transactions in 1701. His thermometer used linseed oil, whose volume changes with heat. He took the zero point from the heat of winter air at which water starts to freeze, and he put the point at which water begins to boil at 33. Other fixed points in his table included contact with the human body at 12, and various melting points for metals such as lead at 96 and bismuth at 81, with a bright glowing iron at 192.
Newton's table was a pioneering attempt to tie a numerical scale to reproducible physical events, and it appeared at about the same time as the scale of Ole Rømer. Because his reference points do not line up neatly, no single conversion is exact. Using water's boiling point gives about 3.03 degrees Celsius per degree Newton, while the body-temperature mark implies about 3.08. The figure used here is the boiling-point version, 100/33 kelvin per degree, with 0 N at 273.15 K. The scale never entered regular use and is now only a historical curiosity.
0 degrees Newton = 273.15 kelvins (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Newton scale
Degree Celsius (°C)
The metric temperature scale used worldwide for weather and daily life: water freezes at 0 °C and boils at 100 °C at standard pressure. Named after Anders Celsius.
Anders Celsius, a Swedish astronomer, proposed a scale in 1742 that ran the opposite way from the one we use: 0 for the boiling point of water and 100 for its freezing point. Credit for flipping it is shared and partly disputed. French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published a reversed mercury thermometer in 1743, Carl Linnaeus is usually credited with reversing it in 1744, the year Celsius died, and others in Sweden, including Pehr Elvius, Daniel Ekström and Mårten Strömer, are also named as independent developers.
For much of the nineteenth century the scale was called centigrade, until the CGPM and CIPM adopted the name degree Celsius in 1948, partly to honor Celsius and to avoid confusion with a French term for a subdivision of the gradian. From 1954 to 2019 it was defined through absolute zero and the triple point of water; since 2019 it is tied to the Boltzmann constant. Strictly, water boils at about 99.974 degrees on the modern international temperature scale, not exactly 100. Australian weather reports switched exclusively to Celsius in 1972.
0 degrees Celsius = 273.15 kelvins (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Celsius; BIPM: 9th CGPM (1948), Resolution 7; NIST: the kelvin and the SI redefinition
Related conversions
- Celsius to Newton (reverse)
- Newton to kelvin
- Newton to Fahrenheit
- Kelvin to Celsius
- Fahrenheit to Celsius
- Rankine to Celsius
- Réaumur to Celsius
- Delisle to Celsius
- Rømer to Celsius
See all temperature units.