Psi to atmospheres

One pound per square inch is 0.06804596391 atmospheres, and this shows the working rather than just the answer. Nothing you type here leaves your browser — it is worked out on your own device, so there is nothing to send and nothing to log.

The factor

One pound per square inch is 0.06804596391 atmospheres. That is the whole of the conversion: multiply by it, and nothing else happens.

What this page will not claim

It will not call this conversion exact. The factor is right to every figure shown, but at least one of these two units is not defined exactly in terms of the other, so there is a limit to how far the decimals mean anything.

The pound per square inch is a pound-force spread over a square inch. Exact as a fraction, endless as a decimal.

The atmosphere is defined as exactly 101,325 pascals. Not quite a bar.

The number in your head

Most people use 0.068 for this, which is the factor to two significant figures. It is low by 0.0675% — 0.675 atmospheres too few in every thousand, and 6.75 in every ten thousand.

Going the other way

The reverse is not this sum backwards in your head. It is a different factor, 14.695948775513, and dividing by one is not the same as multiplying by a rounded version of the other.

Rounded, the way back is 14.7, which is high by 0.0276%. So the two roundings do not cancel: go out and back with both and you do not land where you started.

How many of those decimals mean anything

The box above will give you ten decimal places because it can. Whether they mean anything is decided by your measurement, not by the arithmetic.

If you measured to the nearest pound per square inch, your figure is already uncertain by half of one — so the answer is uncertain by about 0.034023 atmospheres, and every digit past that is decoration. Quoting 0.08400683 when you measured with a tape is claiming a precision the tape never had.

Where these two sit

Psi and atmospheres both measure pressure, which is why they can be converted at all. A conversion between families — a length into a weight — is not a conversion, it is a question with a missing quantity in it.

The unit converter pairs psi with bars rather than with atmospheres, because that is the conversion people ask for most. This page exists because a good many ask for this one instead.

Other conversions from psi

bars · kilopascals · pascals · millibars · inHg · mmHg · torr · hectopascals

Where to go next