Unit Converter
Seven unit families with one-typed-value-all-results tables; temperature and KB/KiB done right.
The drawing is in inches, the material is sold in centimeters; bandwidth is Mbps but downloads show MB/s; the overseas API returns Fahrenheit — unit conversion is trivial until it is wrong. This tool covers seven high-frequency families: type one value and every unit in the category updates at once, no from/to picking required.
The two classic traps are handled explicitly: temperature is an affine quantity (°F needs the 32 offset and the 1.8 factor — multiplying by a coefficient is simply wrong), and data size has two prefixes (KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024) whose mixing is why a "1TB drive" shows 931GiB in the OS. Both families are shown side by side.
KB vs KiB
SI prefixes step by 1000 (KB = 1000 B); IEC prefixes step by 1024 (KiB = 1024 B). Storage vendors quote SI (bigger marketing number), operating systems report IEC (binary addressing) — hence the missing-capacity confusion. When dealing with disks or memory, first establish which prefix family the other side means.
Why temperature is not just a factor
Length converts by pure ratio (0 °C maps to 0 m); temperature's zero is a human artifact — 32 °F is freezing. So temperature needs an affine transform (°F = °C × 1.8 + 32). The tool normalizes through Celsius internally, so any of the three scales converts to any other consistently.
Frequently asked questions
- How accurate are the factors?
- Factors use the internationally defined exact values (1 inch = 0.0254 m is a definition, not an approximation), with results carried to generous precision; the display rounds conventionally.
- Where are volume and energy?
- The seven families here are the highest-frequency ones for developers and daily use; lower-frequency categories (volume, energy, pressure) can be added on demand rather than cluttering the page.
- Are regional units included?
- Area includes mu (1 mu = 666.67 m²) alongside hectares and acres; the common imperial units (inch/foot/mile/pound/ounce) are all in.