newton metre

The newton-metre (also non-hyphenated, newton metre; symbol N⋅m or N m) is the unit of torque (also called ) in the International System of Units (SI). One newton-metre is equal to the torque resulting from a force of one newton applied perpendicularly to the end of a moment arm that is one metre long.

The unit is also used less commonly as a unit of work, or energy, in which case it is equivalent to the more common and standard SI unit of energy, the joule. In this usage the metre term represents the distance travelled or displacement in the direction of the force, and not the perpendicular distance from a fulcrum (i.e. the lever arm length) as it does when used to express torque. This usage is generally discouraged, since it can lead to confusion as to whether a given quantity expressed in newton-metres is a torque or a quantity of energy. "Even though torque has the same dimension as energy (SI unit joule), the joule is never used for expressing torque".