Newton to Kelvin (°N to K)
1 degree Newton equals 276.180303 kelvins.
How to convert degrees Newton to kelvins
Converting degrees Newton to kelvins is not a simple multiplication, so use the formula below.
K = °N × 3.03030303 + 273.15
Example: 10 degrees Newton = 303.4530303 kelvins.
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
Kelvin (K)
The SI base unit of temperature. Zero kelvin is absolute zero, where particles have minimal thermal motion. A kelvin step is the same size as a Celsius degree.
Lord Kelvin, born William Thomson, published an absolute temperature scale in 1848 and refined it with James Joule in 1854. Its zero sits at absolute zero, and its degree is the same size as a Celsius degree. The kelvin entered the SI in 1954, defined as 1/273.16 of the thermodynamic temperature of the triple point of water, where ice, liquid and vapor coexist. In 1967 the 13th CGPM renamed the unit from the degree Kelvin to simply the kelvin, with symbol K, and no word degree.
Since 20 May 2019 the kelvin has been defined by fixing the Boltzmann constant at exactly 1.380649 times 10 to the minus 23 joule per kelvin, which frees it from the properties of any one substance. Scientists use it for stars and cryogenics, and lighting designers use it for color temperature. NIST notes that incandescent bulbs run near 3,000 K, daylight lamps at 5,000 to 5,600 K, and the Sun's surface at about 5,800 K. Room temperature, about 21 degrees Celsius, is roughly 294 K.
The kelvin is the reference unit for temperature on this site.
Sources: NIST: the kelvin and the SI redefinition; BIPM: 13th CGPM (1967), Resolution 3; Wikipedia: Kelvin
Related conversions
- Kelvin to Newton (reverse)
- Newton to Celsius
- Newton to Fahrenheit
- Celsius to kelvin
- Fahrenheit to kelvin
- Rankine to kelvin
- Réaumur to kelvin
- Delisle to kelvin
- Rømer to kelvin
See all temperature units.