This web page allows you to convert the different electrical permittivity units and answers the following questions in particular: What is electrical permittivity and what does it measure in a material? Who created the first measure of electrical permittivity and when? What is the most commonly used unit for electrical permittivity? What are some reference or record values for different units of electrical permittivity for air? What formula should be used to convert one unit of electrical permittivity to another?
Electrical permittivity (ε) is a measure of the ability of a material to store electric charge in the presence of an electric field. It is also a measure of a material's ability to resist electric flow. Electrical permittivity is a physical quantity that indicates the ratio of the electric field strength (E) to the electric flux density (D) of a material. It is an important source of information about the electrical properties of materials, such as resistivity and conductivity.
The first measure of electrical permittivity was created by Arthur Brown in 1875. Since then, several different units have been used to measure electrical permittivity. These include Farads per meter (F/m), Coulombs per square meter (C/m2), Volts per meter (V/m), Ohms per meter (Ω/m), Joules per meter cube (J/m3), HectoFarads per meter (hF/m), PicoFarads per meter (pF/m), NanoFarads per meter (nF/m), Gigaohms per meter (GΩ/m), and the relative permittivity (εr).
The relative permittivity (εr) unit is the most commonly used unit for electrical permittivity. The value of εr is always a unitless number, which is defined as the permittivity of a material relative to the permittivity of vacuum. The permittivity of vacuum is the same in all directions, so a material's permittivity is the ratio of its permittivity in the direction of the electric field compared to the permittivity of vacuum.
To convert from one unit of electrical permittivity to another, one must use the formula (Unit 1/Unit 2)=(permittivity 1/permittivity 2). For example, to convert from Farads per meter (F/m) to Volts per meter (V/m), the formula would be V/m=(F/m)/(2πεr), where εr is the relative permittivity of the material.