Tesla (T)
Also called T, Newton per ampere-metre
The tesla is the SI unit of magnetic field strength, equal to one newton per ampere-metre. It is a large unit: Earth's field at the surface is a few tens of microtesla, while a hospital MRI magnet runs at 1.5 or 3 tesla.
Magnetic field strength takes its unit from the force it produces, not from any property a magnet owns. Rearrange the sheet's with the wire perpendicular to the field:
The other printed force law, , gives the same unit spelled differently, , since a coulomb per second is an ampere.
One tesla is a great deal of field. It means a A current in a m length of perpendicular wire feels a whole newton. Real values sit far below:
| Source | Rough magnitude |
|---|---|
| Earth's field at the surface | tens of microtesla |
| A refrigerator magnet | a few millitesla |
| A hospital MRI magnet | to T |
The sheet's own source equation agrees. With and , a A wire produces T at cm, so magnetism answers usually land in microtesla or millitesla.
The weber is not on any AP sheet. A tesla is sometimes described as a weber per square metre, from , but none of the four unit-symbol tables prints the weber. Give magnetic flux in and it will always be recognised.
Tesla is printed on the AP Physics 2 and AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism unit-symbol tables.