Convert dynamic (absolute) viscosity between pascal-seconds, poise, centipoise and imperial units.
Fluids • 7 units
All 7 units on the Dynamic Viscosity Converter are defined against the Pascal-second (Pa·s), so each result is one conversion factor away from a single reference rather than the end of a chain of roundings.
The conversion this page is most often opened for is ready before you type anything: 1 Pa·s = 1,000 cP. Change either side and every row in the table recalculates with it.
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Dynamic (absolute) viscosity measures a fluid's internal friction — its resistance to flow. The CGS unit, the poise (P), honours French physician-physicist Jean Léonard Marie Poiseuille, who studied blood flow in the 1840s; the SI unit is the pascal-second (Pa·s). Because most everyday fluids are "thin", the centipoise (cP) is the workhorse unit — and conveniently, water at 20 °C is almost exactly 1 cP.
Viscosity values guide the formulation of motor oils, paints, inks, food, cosmetics and lubricants, and the design of pumps and pipelines. Lab and industry data appear in Pa·s, mPa·s, poise and centipoise interchangeably, so converting between them is a daily task in chemical and mechanical engineering.
Quick reference — 1 Pascal-second (Pa·s) is equal to:
| Millipascal-second | mPa·s | 1,000 |
| Poise | P | 10 |
| Centipoise | cP | 1,000 |
| Newton-second/m² | N·s/m² | 1 |
| Pound/(foot·second) | lb/(ft·s) | 0.67196895 |
| Pound-force·s/ft² | lbf·s/ft² | 0.0208854338 |
7 units of dynamic viscosity, each a fixed multiple of the Pa·s. The table spans 47,880:1, from mPa·s (0.001 Pa·s) to lbf·s/ft² (47.8803 Pa·s). Conversion is one multiplication into the base unit and one division out of it, with no lookup table and no approximation.
value_to = value_from × (factor_from ÷ factor_to)1 Pa·s = 1 Pa·s1 mPa·s = 0.001 Pa·s1 P = 0.1 Pa·s1 cP = 0.001 Pa·s1 N·s/m² = 1 Pa·s1 lb/(ft·s) = 1.48816 Pa·s1 lbf·s/ft² = 47.8803 Pa·swhere:
Assumptions: Factors are exact definitions. Full double precision is carried internally and rounding is applied only for display.
Result25 Pa·s = 25000 cP
The conversions on this page are straightforward — a pascal-second is a thousand centipoise — but they quietly assume the fluid is Newtonian, meaning its viscosity does not depend on how hard it is being sheared. Water, light oils and most solvents behave that way, and for them one number genuinely characterises the fluid.
A great many practical fluids do not. Paint, blood, ketchup, drilling mud and polymer melts shear-thin, dropping in viscosity as they are stirred, pumped or brushed, which is precisely what makes paint spread under a brush and stay put on a wall. For these, a viscosity figure is meaningless without the shear rate it was measured at, and two laboratories quoting different numbers for the same product may both be right. This is why rheology reports carry a curve rather than a value.
Dynamic viscosity is also the quantity that pairs with density to give kinematic viscosity, and the two are routinely confused because their practical units — centipoise and centistokes — look alike and both sit near 1 for water at room temperature. That coincidence holds only because water's density is close to one gram per cubic centimetre; for any denser or lighter fluid the two numbers separate immediately.