Quintals to Metric Tons (q to t)

1 quintal equals 0.1 metric tons exactly.

1 quintal = 0.1 metric tons

How to convert quintals to metric tons

To convert quintals to metric tons, multiply the number of quintals by 0.1. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply metric tons by 10.

metric tons = quintals × 0.1

Example: 10 quintals = 1 metric ton.

About these units

Quintal (q)

Metric (SI)Traditional unit (still used in some regions)

100 kilograms. Still used for crop yields in India, France and parts of Europe and South America.

Romance languages gave this unit its name, from the idea of a hundred base units, while German and Russian forms such as Zentner and tsentner follow the same logic. Before metrication a quintal was a hundred of some local pound, so it ranged widely: about 48.95 kilograms in France, around 46 in Spain, about 58.75 in Portugal and 50 in Germany.

The metric quintal fixed the figure at 100 kilograms, the value used here. Farmers in France, Italy, Poland, India and Indonesia still quote yields and prices in it, and wholesale grain in Ethiopia and Eritrea is priced per quintal, as it is in Brazil and some other South American countries. The United States wrote it into law in 1866 as 100 kilograms, though neither the US nor NIST uses it now. English-speaking trade once used the word as another name for the hundredweight, and in Newfoundland a 112 pound quintal was the salt-cod unit into the 1960s.

1 quintal = 100 kilograms (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Quintal

Metric Ton (t)

Metric (SI)Current unit

1,000 kilograms (about 2,204.6 lb), also spelled tonne. Used for cargo, grain and vehicle weights outside the US.

Barrels gave the tonne its name. The word goes back to a Germanic root for a large cask, the tun, and a full tun could easily weigh around a tonne. In English this became ton; the spelling tonne has been used in France since 1842, where it replaced the older tonneau, and pre-metric French tonnes were 2,000 livres, about 979 kg. Once the metric system took hold, the tonne was fixed at 1,000 kilograms, which is the mass of roughly a cubic metre of water.

The unit is accepted for use with the SI, and its symbol is a lowercase t with no period. Because it sits close to the old English ton, the two get confused: the short ton used in the US is about 10 percent lighter than a tonne, while the long ton differs by less than 2 percent. NIST calls the unit the metric ton, and the spelling tonne is rare in the US. Very large quantities are stated in prefixed forms such as the megatonne, which equals a teragram. In explosives, a tonne of TNT is taken as about 4.2 gigajoules.

1 metric ton = 1,000 kilograms (exactly).

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

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