Convert Bekan (Biblical Hebrew) (bekan) to Dalton (Da) instantly.
About these units
Bekan (Biblical Hebrew) (bekan)
The bekan (or beka) is a half-shekel unit, approximately 5.6 grams. It appears in the Hebrew Bible as the required contribution for the census tax, symbolizing equality among contributors regardless of wealth. As a practical unit, the beka was useful for small-scale offerings, jewelry, and silverwork. Its precise half-shekel value made it easy to incorporate into the larger Hebrew weight structure. The bekan highlights how weights were intertwined with religious observance and communal obligations in ancient Israelite society.
Dalton (Da)
The Dalton is numerically identical to 1 atomic mass unit and is commonly used in biochemistry and molecular biology, especially for expressing the masses of proteins, peptides, and macromolecules. While "u" is often preferred in physics and chemistry, the Dalton became the standard in biological sciences because it fits neatly into descriptions of amino acids, nucleotides, and biomolecular complexes. For example, a typical protein may have a mass of 50 kilodaltons (kDa). The adoption of the Dalton helped unify communication across genomics, proteomics, and structural biology. As molecular biology expands into nanotechnology and synthetic biology, the Dalton remains a central unit for describing the building blocks of life.