Joule

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This article is about the unit of energy. For other uses, see Joule (disambiguation).

Joule

Unit system SI derived unit

Unit of Energy

Symbol J

Named after James Prescott Joule

Conversions

1 J in ... ... is equal to ...

   SI base units    kg⋅m2⋅s−2

   CGS units    1×107 erg

   watt-seconds    1 W⋅s

   kilowatt-hours    ≈2.78×10−7 kW⋅h

   kilocalories (thermochemical)    2.390×10−4 kcalth

   BTUs    9.48×10−4 BTU

   electronvolts    ≈6.24×1018 eV

The joule (/dʒuːl/ ;[1][2][3] symbol: J) is a derived unit of energy in the International System of
Units.[4] It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of 1 Newton displaces a body
through a distance of 1 metre in the direction of the force applied. It is also the energy dissipated
as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one
second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–1889).[5][6][7]

Contents
  1 Definition
 2 History
 3 Practical examples
 4 Multiples
 5 Conversions
 6 Newton-metre and torque
 7 Watt-second
o 7.1 Photography
 8 See also
 9 Notes
 10 References
 11 External links

Definition
In terms firstly of base SI units and then in terms of other SI units, a joule is defined as

where

Symbol Meaning

J joule

kg kilogram

m metre

s second

N newton

Pa pascal

W watt

C coulomb

V volt

Ω ohm

A ampere

One joule can also be defined as the following:

  The work required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through an electrical potential
difference of one volt, or one coulomb-volt (C⋅V). This relationship can be used to define the
volt.
 The work required to produce one watt of power for one second, or one watt-second (W⋅s)
(compare kilowatt-hour – 3.6 megajoules). This relationship can be used to define the watt.

The joule is named after James Prescott Joule. As with every SI unit named for a person, its
symbol starts with an upper case letter (J), but when written in full it follows the rules for
capitalisation of a common noun; i.e., "joule" becomes capitalised at the beginning of a sentence
and in titles, but is otherwise in lower case.

History
The cgs system had been declared official in 1881, at the first International Electrical Congress.
The erg was adopted as its unit of energy in 1882. Wilhelm Siemens, in his inauguration speech
as chairman of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (23 August 1882) first
proposed the Joule as unit of heat, to be derived from the electromagnetic units Ampere and
Ohm, in cgs units equivalent to 107 erg. The naming of the unit in honour of James Prescott Joule
(1818–1889), at the time retired but still living (aged 63), is due to Siemens:

"Such a heat unit, if found acceptable, might with great propriety, I think, be called the Joule,
after the man who has done so much to develop the dynamical theory of heat." [8]

At the second International Electrical Congress, on 31 August 1889, the joule was officially
adopted alongside the watt and the quadrant (later renamed to henry).[9] Joule died in the same
year, on 11 October 1889. At the fourth congress (1893), the "international Ampere" and
"international Ohm" were defined, with slight changes in the specifications for their
measurement, with the "international Joule" being the unit derived from them.

In 1935, the International Electrotechnical Commission (as the successor organisation of the
International Electrical Congress) adopted the "Giorgi system", which by virtue of assuming a
defined value for the magnetic constant also implied a redefinition of the Joule. The Giorgi
system was approved by the International Committee for Weights and Measures in 1946. The
joule was now no longer defined based on electromagnetic unit, but instead as the unit of work
performed by one unit of force (at the time not yet named newton) over the distance of 1 metre.
The joule was explicitly intended as the unit of energy to be used in both electromagnetic and
mechanical contexts.[10] The ratification of the definition at the ninth General Conference on
Weights and Measures, in 1948, added the specification that the joule was also to be preferred as
the unit of heat in the context of calorimetry, thereby officially deprecating the use of the calorie.
[11]
This definition was the direct precursor of the joule as adopted in the modern International
System of Units in 1960.

The definition of the joule as J=kg⋅m2⋅s−2 has remained unchanged since 1946, but the joule as a
derived unit has inherited changes in the definitions of the second (in 1960 and 1967), the metre
(in 1983) and the kilogram (in 2019).
Practical examples
One joule represents (approximately):

 The amount of electricity required to run a 1 W device for 1 s.

 The energy required to accelerate a 1 kg mass at 1 m/s2 through a distance of 1 m.
 The kinetic energy of a 2 kg mass travelling at 1 m/s, or a 1 kg mass travelling at 1.41 m/s.
 The energy required to lift a medium-sized tomato up 1 metre (3 ft 3 in), assuming the tomato
has a mass of 101.97 grams (3.597 oz).
 The heat required to raise the temperature 0.239 g of water from 0 °C to 1 °C, or from 32 °F to
33.8 °F.[12]
 The typical energy released as heat by a person at rest every 1/60 s (17 ms).[note 1]
 The kinetic energy of a 50 kg human moving very slowly (0.2 m/s or 0.72 km/h).
 The kinetic energy of a 56 g tennis ball moving at 6 m/s (22 km/h).[13]
 The food energy (kcal) in slightly more than half of a sugar crystal (0.102 mg/crystal).

Multiples
For additional examples, see Orders of magnitude (energy).

SI multiples of joule (J)

Submultiples Multiples

Value SI symbol Name Value SI symbol Name

10−1 J dJ decijoule 101 J daJ decajoule

10−2 J cJ centijoule 102 J hJ hectojoule

10−3 J mJ millijoule 103 J kJ kilojoule

10−6 J µJ microjoule 106 J MJ megajoule

10−9 J nJ nanojoule 109 J GJ gigajoule

10−12 J pJ picojoule 1012 J TJ terajoule

10−15 J fJ femtojoule 1015 J PJ petajoule

10−18 J aJ attojoule 1018 J EJ exajoule

10−21 J zJ zeptojoule 1021 J ZJ zettajoule

10−24 J yJ yoctojoule 1024 J YJ yottajoule

 Common multiples are in bold face

Yoctojoule

The yoctojoule (yJ) is equal to 10−24 joule.

Zeptojoule

The zeptojoule (zJ) is equal to one sextillionth (10−21) of one joule. 160 zJ is about one
electronvolt.

The minimal energy needed to change a bit at around room temperature – approximately
2.75 zJ – is given by the Landauer limit.

Attojoule

The attojoule (aJ) is equal to 10−18 joule.

Femtojoule

The femtojoule (fJ) is equal to 10−15 joule.

Picojoule

The picojoule (pJ) is equal to one trillionth (10−12) of one joule.

Nanojoule

The nanojoule (nJ) is equal to one billionth (10−9) of one joule. 160 nanojoules is about the
kinetic energy of a flying mosquito.[14]

Microjoule

The microjoule (μJ) is equal to one millionth (10−6) of one joule. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
produces collisions of the microjoule order (7 TeV) per particle.

Millijoule

The millijoule (mJ) is equal to one thousandth (10−3) of a joule.

Kilojoule

The kilojoule (kJ) is equal to one thousand (103) joules. Nutritional food labels in most countries
express energy in kilojoules (kJ).[15]

One square metre of the Earth receives about 1.4 kilojoules of solar radiation every second in
full daylight.[16] A human in a sprint has approximately 3 kJ of kinetic energy,[17] while a cheetah
in a 70 mph sprint has approximately 20 kJ.[18]
Megajoule

The megajoule (MJ) is equal to one million (106) joules, or approximately the kinetic energy of a
one megagram (tonne) vehicle moving at 161 km/h (100 mph).

The energy required to heat 10 L of liquid water at constant pressure from 0 °C (32 °F) to 100 °C
(212 °F) is approximately 4.2 MJ.

One kilowatt-hour of electricity is 3.6 megajoules.

Gigajoule

The gigajoule (GJ) is equal to one billion (109) joules. 6 GJ is about the chemical energy of
combusting 1 barrel (159 l) of petroleum.[19] 2 GJ is about the Planck energy unit.

Terajoule

The terajoule (TJ) is equal to one trillion (1012) joules; or about 0.278 GWh (which is often used
in energy tables). About 63 TJ of energy was released by Little Boy.[20] The International Space
Station, with a mass of approximately 450 megagrams and orbital velocity of 7700 m/s,[21] has a
kinetic energy of roughly 13 TJ. In 2017, Hurricane Irma was estimated to have a peak wind
energy of 112 TJ.[22][23] 90 TJ is about the amount of energy equivalent to 1 gram of mass.

Petajoule

The petajoule (PJ) is equal to one quadrillion (1015) joules. 210 PJ is about 50 megatons of TNT
which is the amount of energy released by the Tsar Bomba, the largest man-made explosion
ever.

Exajoule

The exajoule (EJ) is equal to one quintillion (1018) joules. The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and
tsunami in Japan had 1.41 EJ of energy according to its rating of 9.0 on the moment magnitude
scale. Yearly U.S. energy consumption amounts to roughly 94 EJ.

Zettajoule

The zettajoule (ZJ) is equal to one sextillion (1021) joules. It is somewhat more than the amount
of energy required to heat the Baltic sea by 1 °C, assuming properties similar to those of pure
water.[24] Human annual world energy consumption is approximately 0.5 ZJ. The energy to raise
the temperature of Earth's atmosphere 1 °C is approximately 2.2 ZJ.

Yottajoule

The yottajoule (YJ) is equal to one septillion (1024) joules. It is a little less than the amount of
energy required to heat the Indian Ocean by 1 °C, assuming properties similar to those of pure
water.[24] The thermal output of the Sun is approximately 400 YJ per second.
Conversions
Main article: Conversion of units of energy

1 joule is equal to (approximately unless otherwise stated):

 107 erg (exactly)
 6.24150974×1018 eV
 0.2390 cal (gram calories)
 2.390×10−4 kcal (food calories)
 9.4782×10−4 BTU
 0.7376 ft⋅lb (foot-pound)
 23.7 ft⋅pdl (foot-poundal)
 2.7778×10−7 kW⋅h (kilowatt-hour)
 2.7778×10−4 W⋅h (watt-hour)
 9.8692×10−3 latm (litre-atmosphere)
 11.1265×10−15 g (by way of mass-energy equivalence)
 10−44 foe (exactly)

Units defined exactly in terms of the joule include:

 1 thermochemical calorie = 4.184 J[25]

 1 International Table calorie = 4.1868 J[26]
 1 W⋅h = 3600 J (or 3.6 kJ)
 1 kW⋅h = 3.6×106 J (or 3.6 MJ)
 1 W⋅s = 1 J
 1 ton TNT = 4.184 GJ

Newton-metre and torque

Main article: Newton-metre

In mechanics, the concept of force (in some direction) has a close analogue in the concept of
torque (about some angle):

Linear Angular

Force Torque

Mass Moment of inertia

Displacement Angle

A result of this similarity is that the SI unit for torque is the newton-metre, which works out
algebraically to have the same dimensions as the joule, but are not interchangeable. The General
Conference on Weights and Measures has given the unit of energy the name joule, but has not
given the unit of torque any special name, hence it is simply the newton-metre (N⋅m) – a
compound name derived from its constituent parts.[27] The use of newton-metres for torque and
joules for energy is helpful to avoid misunderstandings and miscommunications.[27]

The distinction may be seen also in the fact that energy is a scalar quantity – the dot product of a
force vector and a displacement vector. By contrast, torque is a vector – the cross product of a
force vector and a distance vector. Torque and energy are related to one another by the equation

where E is energy, τ is (the vector magnitude of) torque, and θ is the angle swept (in radians).
Since plane angles are dimensionless, it follows that torque and energy have the same
dimensions.

Watt-second
A watt-second (symbol W s or W·s) is a derived unit of energy equivalent to the joule.[28] The
watt-second is the energy equivalent to the power of one watt sustained for one second. While
the watt-second is equivalent to the joule in both units and meaning, there are some contexts in
which the term "watt-second" is used instead of "joule".[why?]

Photography

See also: Guide number

In photography, the unit for flashes is the watt-second. A flash can be rated in watt-seconds (e.g.,
300 W⋅s) or in joules (different names for the same thing), but historically, the term "watt-
second" has been used and continues to be used.

The energy rating a flash is given is not a reliable benchmark for its light output because there
are numerous factors that affect the energy conversion efficiency. For example, the construction
of the tube will affect the efficiency, and the use of reflectors and filters will change the usable
light output towards the subject. Some companies specify their products in "true" watt-seconds,
and some specify their products in "nominal" watt-seconds.[29]