Pascal

The pascal (symbol Pa) is the SI unit of pressure.
It is equivalent to one newton per square metre. The unit is named after Blaise Pascal, the eminent French mathematician, physicist and philosopher.

1 Pa -
: = 1 N/m² = 1 (kg·m/s²)/m² = 1 kg/m·s²
: = 0.01 millibar
: = 0.00001 bar

The same unit is also used for stress, Young's modulus and tensile strength.

Standard atmospheric pressure is 101 325 Pa = 101.325 kPa = 1013.25 hPa = 1013.25 mbar = 760 Torr (ISO 2533).

Meteorologists world-wide have for a long time measured air pressure in millibars. After the introduction of SI units, many preferred to preserve the customary pressure figures. Therefore, meteorologists use hectopascals today for air pressure, which are equivalent to millibars, while similar pressures are given in kilopascals in practically all other fields, where the hecto prefix is hardly ever used.

1 hectopascal (hPa) -
= 100 Pa = 1 mbar

1 kilopascal (kPa) -
= 1000 Pa = 10 hPa

In the former Soviet mts system the unit of pressure is the pieze, which is equivalent to one kilopascal.

The Unicode computer character set has dedicated symbols ㎩ for Pa and ㎪ for kPa, but these exist merely for backwards-compatibility with some older ideographic character sets.

Examples of various values (approximately)

¹at the Earth's surface

Comparison to other units of pressure