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 meter to 1 millimeter. A centimetre (International spelling) or centimeter (American English), with SI symbol cm, is a Units of measurement, unit of

length Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with Dimension (physical quantity), dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a Base unit (measurement), base unit for length is chosen, ...

in the International System of Units (SI) equal to one hundredth of a

metre The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...

, ''centi-'' being the

SI prefix The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (from French ), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. It is the only system of measurement with official st ...

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,

es 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 Human height or stature is the distance from the bottom of the feet to the top of the head in a human body, standing erect. It is measured using a stadiometer, in centimetres when using the metric system or SI system, or feet and inches when ...

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

One

millilitre The litre ( Commonwealth spelling) or liter ( American spelling) (SI symbols L and l, other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metres (m3). A cu ...

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

Other uses

In addition to its use in the measurement of

, the centimetre is used: * sometimes, to report the level of rainfall as measured by a

rain gauge A rain gauge (also known as udometer, ombrometer, pluviometer and hyetometer) is an instrument used by meteorologists and Hydrology, hydrologists to gather and measure the amount of liquid precipitation in a predefined area, over a set period of t ...

* in the CGS system, the centimetre is used to measure

capacitance Capacitance is the ability of an object to store electric charge. It is measured by the change in charge in response to a difference in electric potential, expressed as the ratio of those quantities. Commonly recognized are two closely related ...

, where 1 cm of capacitance =

farad The farad (symbol: F) is the unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge, in the International System of Units, International System of Units (SI), equivalent to 1 coulomb per volt (C/V). It is named afte ...

s * 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 In the physical sciences, the wavenumber (or wave number), also known as repetency, is the spatial frequency of a wave. Ordinary wavenumber is defined as the number of wave cycles divided by length; it is a physical quantity with dimension of ...

: 1 kayser = 1 wave per centimetre; or, more generally, (wavenumber in kaysers) = 1/(

wavelength In physics and mathematics, wavelength or spatial period of a wave or periodic function is the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. In other words, it is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same ''phase (waves ...

in centimetres). The SI unit of wavenumber is the inverse metre, m⁻¹.

Unicode symbols

For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and

Korea Korea is a peninsular region in East Asia consisting of the Korean Peninsula, Jeju Island, and smaller islands. Since the end of World War II in 1945, it has been politically Division of Korea, divided at or near the 38th parallel north, 3 ...

n ( CJK) characters,

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

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.

References

External links

CM to Inch Converter
{{Authority control Metre -02 Centimetre–gram–second system of units SI units 100 (number)

Equivalence to other units of length

Other uses

Unicode symbols

See also

References

External links