[havril (OP)]

Somebody told me that the vacuum inside a certain container was 0.5 mbars. I did not have the opportunity to ask him to expand on how the mbar scale works. So I wonder if someone out there can help?

TIA
Harvey

[roberth]

I'm guessing that a mbar is a millibar or one thousandth of a bar. A bar is the atmospheric pressure at sea level and is equal to about 14 psi. When you see a weather map showing isobars (or areas of similar air pressure), the one's below 1000 represent low pressure areas and the ones above 1000 are high pressure areas. These measurements are in millibars.

[qpan]

The metric conversion is 1 bar = 10^5 Pa (Pascals = N/(m^2)), so one millibar = 10^2 Pa.

"I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it."
-Edgar Allan Poe

[gsmollin]

I'm going on memory here, so don't pillory me if I'm wrong... The definition of a bar = 1 million dynes / square centimeter. It converts to about 14.5 psi.