Grams to Drams (g to dr)

1 gram equals 0.5643833912 drams (rounded).

1 gram = 0.5643833912 drams

How to convert grams to drams

To convert grams to drams, multiply the number of grams by 0.5643833912. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply drams by 1.771845195 (rounded).

drams = grams × 0.5643833912

Example: 10 grams = 5.643833912 drams.

About these units

Gram (g)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a kilogram. The standard unit for food quantities and small objects.

A gram was once defined as a small drop of the natural world. The French National Convention of 1795 set it as the absolute weight of a volume of pure water equal to a cube one hundredth of a metre on each side, a cubic centimetre. The reference temperature was first the melting point of ice and was later changed to the temperature of maximum density of water, about 4 degrees Celsius. The word came into French as gramme, from Late Latin gramma, itself from the Greek for a letter or small mark; in Late Antiquity it meant about one twenty-fourth of an ounce.

The gram was the base unit of mass in the centimetre-gram-second system, but in 1960 the SI took the kilogram as its base unit, which made the gram one thousandth of it. That is why it appears in so many everyday places: it is the standard for non-liquid ingredients in cooking and shopping, and nutrition labels commonly list contents per 100 g. For a sense of scale, a small paper clip or a pen cap weighs about a gram, and a Japanese 1-yen coin is close to exactly that, while a US penny is around 2.5 g.

1 gram = 0.001 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Gram; Wikipedia: Kilogram

Dram (dr)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One sixteenth of an ounce (1.7718 g). Used mainly for small quantities of powder.

Greek coinage lies behind this small weight: dram is a form of drachma, a coin that was also a unit of mass in ancient Greece. An Attic drachma weighed about 4.37 grams and a Roman one about 3.41 grams. The avoirdupois dram is smaller than both, one sixteenth of an ounce or one 256th of a pound, which is exactly 1.7718451953125 grams, or about 27.34 grains.

A different dram existed in medicine. The apothecaries' dram is an eighth of an apothecaries' ounce and equals 60 grains, or exactly 3.8879346 grams, and it was common in American pharmacy until the mid-twentieth century. After Britain's Weights and Measures Act 1878 the spellings split by about 1900, with dram for the avoirdupois unit and drachm for the apothecaries' one. Today the avoirdupois dram survives mainly in shotgun shell ratings, expressed in drams of black powder equivalent. As a loose word for a small measure of whisky, it has drifted away from the weight altogether.

1 dram = 0.001771845195 kilograms (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Dram (unit)

Related conversions

See all weight & mass units.