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How to Measure mmHG to PSIA

Meteorologists and scientists use a wide variety of measurement units to communicate levels of pressure. The pound per square inch absolute (psia) is one common unit and gives the pounds of force per square inch produced by the pressure of a gas. Early pressure measurement devices actually used columns of liquid mercury metal, so the millimeter mercury (mmHg) also became, and remains, a standard unit. You can convert a pressure reading from mmHg to psia using a single conversion factor.

Instructions

- 1
  Enter the numerical value of your pressure reading, in units of mmHg, into a calculator. For example, if you were performing low pressure experiments and you measured the pressure in a vacuum chamber as 50 mmHg, you would enter 50,
- 2
  Multiply the value you just entered by 0.01934. This is the conversion factor between mmHg and psia. This factor is derived from the fact that there are 760 mmHg to one standard atmosphere, one atmosphere is 14.696 psia, and 14.696/760 equals 0.01934 .
- 3
  Report the result of your calculation as the pressure reading in units of psia. In the case of the example, you would calculate 50 multiplied by 0.01934 to obtain a reported pressure value of 0.967 psia.

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