Pounds to Kilograms

About this conversion

Pounds and kilograms meet everywhere that American and metric worlds touch: airline check-in counters, gym weight rooms, doctor's offices and kitchens. Most airlines cap checked bags at 23 kg, while American travelers think in 50 lb increments, and the two limits describe almost exactly the same suitcase. In sport, powerlifting bars are loaded in pounds in the United States and in kilograms at international competitions, so athletes who train at home in pounds must relearn their numbers on the platform. Medical charts tell the same story: American records record body weight in pounds, while most drug dosages are calculated from kilograms. The pound used today, the avoirdupois pound, was fixed at exactly 0.45359237 kilograms in 1959 by an agreement between English-speaking countries, which is why modern conversions are perfectly precise rather than approximate.

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Common values at a glance

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