How to Use joule in a Sentence

joule

noun
  • So that gives you a rough feeling for the amount of energy in a joule.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 13 Apr. 2021
  • The joule is the watt-second, in contrast to the watt-hour or kilowatt-hour.
    — Brad Templeton, Forbes, 31 Dec. 2022
  • An erg is a unit of energy equal to 10−7 joules (100 nJ).
    — Christopher McFadden, Interesting Engineering, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Baseball-sized hail could have an impact energy of over 100 Joules.
    — Rhett Allain, WIRED, 8 May 2012
  • One joule is about the amount of electricity used to light a one-watt LED for one second.
    — Bradley Ford, Popular Mechanics, 28 June 2022
  • More tokens per joule means more assistants can handle increasing requirements with the same amount of power.
    — Ron Schmelzer, Forbes.com, 26 Jan. 2026
  • Proposed The kelvin will be set by fixing the numerical value of k, the Boltzmann constant, which has units of joules per kelvin.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 30 Apr. 2012
  • The lead reindeer would absorb trillions of joules of energy every second, instantly bursting into flames.
    — Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering, 25 Dec. 2025
  • Yes, the years, the joules, every galvanizing essence, is ultimately limited.
    — Alan Burdick, The New Yorker, 18 May 2017
  • However, in an interesting twist, scientists also found that cooking with a smaller flame produced more benzene per joule of gas consumed.
    — Tony Briscoe, Los Angeles Times, 21 June 2023
  • The billion billionth time that Twitter is refreshed, the bird will return to her original form and ascend to the sky, borne aloft by a billion billion joules of subtweets.
    — Sara Lautman, The New Yorker, 25 May 2017
  • The company is planning to open a flash joule heating plant to recover metals from electronic waste in Texas in December.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 9 Oct. 2025
  • The combination of free math and stationary data promises calculations that need just thousandths of a trillionth of joule of energy.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 2 June 2025
  • There were no standard units of electricity back then, but modern estimates indicate that a pint-sized Leyden jar would have had the energy of about 1 joule.
    — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 28 Nov. 2019
  • Nuclear fusion, like in the Sun, liberates 630 trillion joules for each kilogram of hydrogen fuel.
    — Big Think, 16 Feb. 2026
  • One British thermal unit is equivalent to 1,055 joules and will raise the temperature of one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit.
    — Matthew J. C. Clark, Harper's Magazine, 2 Aug. 2024
  • In practice, this means energy is no longer wasted; every joule is directed with purpose, whether to stabilize quantum coherence, manage heat or enhance processing speeds.
    — Eric Solis, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2025
  • And yet the total energy released in that event was about 1023 joules, or about a millionth of Earth’s rotational kinetic energy.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 18 Dec. 2025
  • As per calculations, the pendulum, when lifted to about seven inches (18 cm), generates 51 joules of energy.
    — Ameya Paleja, Interesting Engineering, 11 Feb. 2026
  • But according to one modern source, a typical pint-size Leyden jar (roughly half a liter) would likely have had a capacitance of about 1 nanofarad and the energy of about 1 joule.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 30 Nov. 2018
  • Across the full cycle, the yarn could generate more than 40 joules of energy, although it was distributed unevenly, as the stretching and relaxation created a sine wave of alternating current.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 24 Aug. 2017
  • The sievert is a unit that measures the amount of radiation absorbed by a person—while accounting for the type of radiation and its impact on particular organs and tissues in the body—and is equivalent to one joule of energy per kilogram of mass.
    — Ramin Skibba, Scientific American, 14 July 2021
  • Weather models are projecting up to 150 joules per kilogram of convective energy across portions of Northern California.
    — Gerry Díaz, San Francisco Chronicle, 4 Mar. 2023
  • Someone absorbing four grays (equivalent to four joules of radiation energy per kilogram of body weight) would have a 50 percent chance of dying, but people sheltering in bigger buildings would receive smaller doses.
    — Sébastien Philippe, Scientific American, 10 Nov. 2023
  • The researchers demonstrated switching at an energy scale of roughly four quadrillionths of a joule, an extraordinarily tiny amount of energy that is far below what is needed to power even a small LED light briefly.
    — Rupendra Brahambhatt, Interesting Engineering, 16 May 2026
  • In The Encyclopedia of Volcanoes, the energy to melt just Earth’s mantle—which is in fact a solid and not a liquid—is shown to be about 3 × 1030 joules.
    — Phil Plait, Scientific American, 18 Dec. 2025
  • All-in, the robot has a specific energy of over 1,000 joules per kilogram, which is enough to propel it about an order of magnitude higher than even the best biological jumpers, and easily triples the height of any other jumping robot in existence.
    — IEEE Spectrum, 4 Mar. 2023
  • Simulations of a prototype cooling cycle also suggested a cooling capacity of 67 joules per gram, with efficiency approaching 77 percent.
    — Neetika Walter, Interesting Engineering, 22 Jan. 2026
  • Xcimer’s engineering targets include limiting laser manufacturing expenses to less than $100 per joule to ensure competitive energy pricing.
    — Aman Tripathi, Interesting Engineering, 11 June 2026
  • SpaceX also says its approach to safety includes ensuring that any debris fragments land with less than 3 joules of energy —well below the US regulatory threshold, which considers objects exceeding 15 joules a potential human casualty risk.
    — Michael Kan, PCMAG, 28 Feb. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'joule.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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