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The joule (/ dʒ uː l / JOOL, or / dʒ aʊ l / JOWL; symbol: J) is the unit of energy in the International System of Units (SI). [1] It is equal to the amount of work done when a force of one newton displaces a mass through a distance of one metre in the direction of that force.
Energy is defined via work, so the SI unit of energy is the same as the unit of work – the joule (J), named in honour of James Prescott Joule [1] and his experiments on the mechanical equivalent of heat. In slightly more fundamental terms, 1 joule is equal to 1 newton metre and, in terms of SI base units
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.
As the unit name suggests, it is the product of pounds for the unit of force and feet for the unit of displacement. One joule is approximately equal to 0.7376 ft-lbs. [16] [17] Non-SI units of work include the newton-metre, erg, the foot-pound, the foot-poundal, the kilowatt hour, the litre-atmosphere, and the horsepower-hour.
Symbol [1] Name of quantity Unit name Symbol Base units E energy: joule: J = C⋅V = W⋅s kg⋅m 2 ⋅s −2: Q electric charge: coulomb: C A⋅s I electric current: ampere
James Joule was born in 1818, the son of Benjamin Joule (1784–1858), a wealthy brewer, and his wife, Alice Prescott, on New Bailey Street in Salford. [3] Joule was tutored as a young man by the famous scientist John Dalton and was strongly influenced by chemist William Henry and Manchester engineers Peter Ewart and Eaton Hodgkinson.
The dimension of power is energy divided by time. In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of power is the watt (W), which is equal to one joule per second. Other common and traditional measures are horsepower (hp), comparing to the power of a horse; one mechanical horsepower equals about 745.7 watts.
The SI unit for specific energy is the joule per kilogram (J/kg). Other units still in use worldwide in some contexts are the kilocalorie per gram (Cal/g or kcal/g), mostly in food-related topics, and watt-hours per kilogram (W⋅h/kg) in the field of batteries.