Kilonewton (kN)
The kilonewton, symbol kN, equals 1,000 newtons. Engineers and construction professionals use it as a convenient unit for expressing large forces. They often measure the force exerted by vehicles, bridges, and aircraft components in kilonewtons. By using multiples of the newton, they maintain consistency with SI standards while reducing large numbers for practical readability. Civil engineers, aerospace professionals, and structural designers rely on the unit, where accurate force measurement is crucial for ensuring safety and optimal performance.
Dyne (dyn)
The dyne (dyn) is a force unit in the centimeter–gram–second (CGS) system. It was common in 19th and early 20th-century physics. One dyne equals 10⁻⁵ newtons. It is the force needed to accelerate a mass of one gram by one centimeter per second squared. Today, science uses the newton, but dynes are still used in specialized fields, such as measuring surface tension in chemistry and physics. The dyne helped bridge old metric units with today’s SI.