Kilograms to Short Tons (kg to ton (US))

1 kilogram equals 0.001102311311 short tons (rounded).

1 kilogram = 0.001102311311 short tons

How to convert kilograms to short tons

To convert kilograms to short tons, multiply the number of kilograms by 0.001102311311. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply short tons by 907.18474.

short tons = kilograms × 0.001102311311

Example: 10 kilograms = 0.01102311311 short tons.

About these units

Kilogram (kg)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of mass. Since 2019 it is defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant, replacing the old platinum-iridium cylinder in Paris.

Oddly for a base unit, the kilogram began life as a derived one. In 1793 revolutionary France defined the grave as the mass of one litre of water, and a decree of 1795 then replaced it with the kilogramme, a name built from the Greek khilioi (a thousand) and gramma, a Late Latin word for a small weight. In 1799 a platinum cylinder, the Kilogramme des Archives, became the physical standard, matching a cubic decimetre of water at its densest, around 4 degrees Celsius. In 1889 the metric community adopted a platinum-iridium cylinder made in 1879, the International Prototype of the Kilogram, nicknamed Le Grand K.

The kilogram is still the only SI base unit with a prefix in its name. Because SI forbids stacked prefixes, a millionth of a kilogram is a milligram rather than a microkilogram, so every mass prefix is attached to the gram. Calibrating every national standard against one object in a vault near Paris meant that all of them drifted relative to it, so in November 2018 member states voted to tie the kilogram to a fixed value of the Planck constant. The change took effect on 20 May 2019. Day to day nothing shifted, but the definition no longer depends on a single piece of metal.

The kilogram is the reference unit for weight & mass on this site.

Sources: NIST: Kilogram introduction (SI redefinition); Wikipedia: Kilogram

Short Ton (ton (US))

US customaryCurrent unit

2,000 pounds (907.18 kg). The ton used in the United States.

Wine casks lie behind every kind of ton. The word comes from tun, the term for the largest cask, and a tun of wine held roughly 2,000 pounds and took up about 60 cubic feet of cargo space. The short ton of 2,000 pounds keeps that round figure. It is used mainly in the United States and in some Canadian industries, while most of the world uses the tonne or, in the Commonwealth, the long ton.

The short ton is about 907 kg, roughly 10 percent less than a metric tonne, so the two should never be swapped when reading a statistic. The long and metric tons, by contrast, differ from each other by less than 2 percent. Weighing cargo on land is easy, but ships are traditionally described by displacement in long tons, so American shipping and naval documents can contain both kinds of ton at once. A freight bill may also use a measurement ton, which is a volume of 40 cubic feet. When writing for an international audience, spelling out short ton avoids confusion.

1 short ton = 907.18474 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Ton; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8 (mass conversions)

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