Centimeter edit
extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (using Wikipedia Reflection Script)


 

1 centimetre =
SI units
10×10−3 m 10 mm
US customary / Imperial units
32.81×10^−3 ft 0.39370 in
1 centimetre
A carpenters' ruler with centimetre divisions

A centimetre (American spelling: centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one hundredth of a metre, which is the current SI base unit of length. Centi is the SI prefix for a factor of 10−2.1 Hence a centimetre can be written as 10×10−3 m (engineering notation) or 1E−2 m (scientific E notation) — meaning 10×101 mm or 1 m/100 respectively. The centimetre is the base unit of length in the now-deprecated centimetre-gram-second system of units.

Though for many physical quantities, SI prefixes for factors of 103—like milli- and kilo-—are often preferred by technicians, the centimetre remains a practical unit of length for many everyday measurements. A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an adult person.

Contents

Equivalence to other units of length

1 centimetre is equal to:

1 cubic centimetre is equal to 1 millilitre, under the current SI system of units.

Uses of centimetre

In addition to its use in the measurement of length, the centimetre is used:

Unicode symbols

For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for: 5

They are useful only with East Asian fixed-width CJK fonts, because they are equal in size to one Chinese character.

See also

References

  1. ^ BIPM - SI prefixes
  2. ^ Inch - from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics
  3. ^ Rain Measurement, Rain Gauge, Wireless Rain Gauge, Rain Gage, Rain Gauge Data
  4. ^ Capacitance - from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics
  5. ^ [1] CJK Compatibility excerpt from The Unicode Standard, Version 4.1.

External links