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Centimetre

Unit of length

Field	Value
name	centimetre
image	[[Image:CarpentersRule.png	frameless]]
caption	A carpenter's ruler with centimetre divisions
symbol	cm
standard	SI
quantity	length
units1	millimetres
inunits1	10 mm
units2	imperial & US system
inunits2	~1 cm

thumb|upright=1.35|Different lengths as in respect to the [[electromagnetic spectrum]], measured by the metre and its derived scales. The [[microwave]] is in-between 1 metre to 1 millimetre.

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

Equivalence to other units of length

id=in	type=plain	default=0.3937	formula=cm/2.54	NaN-text=0	decimals=4}} inches (There are exactly 2.54 centimetres in one inch.)

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

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 = farads
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.

Unicode symbols

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

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.

References

(2014). "Decimal multiples and submultiples of SI units". Bureau International des Poids et Mesures.
"Using the BMI-for-Age Growth Charts". [[Centers for Disease Control]].
Price, Beth. (2009). "MathsWorld Year 8 VELS Edition". [[Macmillan Publishers.
"Rain Measurement".
Weisstein, Eric W.. "Capacitance -- from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics".
[https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3300.pdf CJK Compatibility excerpt] from The Unicode Standard, Version 10.0.

Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

metre orders-of-magnitude-(length) centimetre–gram–second-system-of-units si-units 100-(number) units-of-length

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