Centimetre
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| SI units | |
|---|---|
| 10.00×10−3 m | 10 mm |
| US customary / Imperial units | |
| 32.81×10−3 ft | 0.3937 in |
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. It can be written as 10×10<math>^{-3}</math> m (engineering notation) or 1 E-2 m (scientific E notation) — meaning 10 × 1 mm or 1 m / 100 respectively. The centimetre is the base unit in the now deprecated centimetre-gram-second system of units.
Though for many invisible physical properties, SI prefixes for factors of 103 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 |
[edit] Equivalence to other units of length
1 centimetre is equal to:
- 0.01 metres, which can be represented by 1.00 E-2 m (1 metre is equal to 100 centimeters)
- about 0.393700787401575 inches (1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimetres exactly)
1 cubic centimetre is equal to 1 millilitre, under the current SI system of units.
[edit] Uses of centimetre
In addition to its use in the measurement of length, the centimeter is used:
- sometimes, to report the level of rainfall as measured by a rain gauge
- in the CGS system, the centimetre is used to measure capacitance
- in Canadian maps, centimetres are used to make conversions from map scale to real world scale (kilometers)
[edit] Unicode symbols
For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for:
- centimetre (cm) - code 339D
- square centimetre (㎠) - code 33A0
- cubic centimetre (㎤) - code 33A4
They are useful only with East Asian fixed-width CJK fonts, because they are equal in size to one Chinese character.
[edit] See also
- 1 E-2 m
- SI
- SI prefix
- Metric system
- Orders of magnitude (length)
- Conversion of units, for comparison with other units of length
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Screen-o-meterar:سنتيمتر
zh-min-nan:Kong-hun br:Kantimetr ca:Centímetre et:Sentimeeter el:Εκατοστόμετρο es:Centímetro eo:Centimetro eu:Zentimetro fr:Centimètre ko:센티미터 id:Sentimeter ia:Centimetro it:Centimetro ka:სანტიმეტრი la:Centimetrum hu:Centiméter mk:Сантиметар nl:Centimeter ja:センチメートル no:Centimeter nn:Centimeter pl:Centymetr pt:Centímetro ru:Сантиметр sk:Centimeter sl:Centimeter ta:சதம மீட்டர் th:เซนติเมตร vi:Xentimét tr:Santimetre uk:Сантиметр ur:سنٹی میٹر zh-yue:厘米 zh:厘米
