Degree Newton (°N)

ScientificHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

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.

0 degrees Newton = 273.15 kelvins (exactly).

About the degree Newton

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.

Sources: Wikipedia: Newton scale

Degree Newton conversion chart

100 degrees Newton expressed in every other temperature unit:

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