Acentimetre (International spelling) or centimeter (American spelling), with SI symbol cm, is a unitoflength in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one hundredth of a metre, centi being the SI prefix for a factor of 1/100.[1] Equivalently, there are 100 centimetres in 1 metre. The centimetre was the base unit of length in the now deprecated centimetre–gram–second (CGS) system of units.
| centimetre | |
|---|---|
A carpenter's ruler with centimetre divisions
| |
| General information | |
| Unit system | SI |
| Unit of | length |
| Symbol | cm |
| Conversions | |
| 1 cm in ... | ... is equal to ... |
| millimetres | 10 mm |
| imperial & US system | ~0.3937 in |
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; for instance, human height is commonly measured in centimetres.[2][3] A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an average adult person.
| 1 centimetre | = 10 millimetres |
| = 0.01 metres | |
| = 0.393700787401574803149606299212598425196850 inches | |
| (There are exactly 2.54 centimetres in one inch.) |
One millilitre is defined as one cubic centimetre, under the SI system of units.
In addition to its use in the measurement of length, the centimetre is used:
For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for:[6]
These characters are each equal in size to one Chinese character and are typically used only with East Asian, fixed-width CJK fonts.