Units of measurement for energy or work, named after physicist James Joule; one joule is the energy needed to apply one newton of force over one meter.
Named after James Prescott Joule (1818-1889), a British physicist who discovered the relationship between heat and mechanical work. The unit was officially adopted to honor his contributions to thermodynamics.
Joule discovered that heat and mechanical energy are fundamentally the same thing—that your muscles burning calories and a lightbulb producing heat follow identical physical laws—which completely revolutionized how scientists understood energy.
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