Centimetre

 ( Metre ) 

A centimetre (International spelling) or centimeter (American English), with SI symbol cm, is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one hundredth of a metre, centi- being the SI prefix for a factor of . 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.

Though for many physical quantities, 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.

A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an average adult person.

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Equivalence to other units of length

centimetre	=
	= metres
	= (There are exactly 2.54 centimetres in one inch.)

One litre is defined as one cubic centimetre, under the SI system of units.

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Other uses In addition to its use in the measurement of length, the centimetre 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, where 1 cm of capacitance =
• in maps, centimetres are used to make conversions from map scale to real world scale (kilometres)
• to represent second moment of areas (cm⁴)
• as the inverse of the Kayser, a CGS unit, and thus a non-SI metric unit of wavenumber: 1 kayser = 1 wave per centimetre; or, more generally, (wavenumber in kaysers) = 1/(wavelength in centimetres). The SI unit of wavenumber is the inverse metre, m⁻¹.

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Unicode symbols For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese language, Japanese and (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for: CJK Compatibility excerpt from The Unicode Standard, Version 10.0.

• centimetre –
• square centimetre –
• cubic centimetre –

These characters are each equal in size to one Chinese character and are typically used only with East Asian, fixed-width CJK fonts.

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See also

• Conversion of units
• Orders of magnitude (length)
• Reciprocal length

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External links

• CM to Inch Converter

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