The cubic metre (in
Commonwealth English
The use of the English language in current and former Member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, countries of Commonwealth of Nations, the Commonwealth was largely inherited from British Empire, British colonisation, with some exceptions. Eng ...
and international spelling as used by the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (, BIPM) is an List of intergovernmental organizations, intergovernmental organisation, through which its 64 member-states act on measurement standards in areas including chemistry, ionising radi ...
) or cubic meter (in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...
) is the unit of
volume
Volume is a measure of regions in three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch) ...
in the
International System of Units
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 s ...
(SI).
[ Its symbol is m3.][ Bureau International de Poids et Mesures.]
Derived units expressed in terms of base units
". 2014. Accessed 7 August 2014. It is the volume of a cube
A cube or regular hexahedron is a three-dimensional space, three-dimensional solid object in geometry, which is bounded by six congruent square (geometry), square faces, a type of polyhedron. It has twelve congruent edges and eight vertices. It i ...
with edges one 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 ...
in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefix
A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol. The pr ...
es, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure
Dry or dryness most often refers to:
* Lack of rainfall, which may refer to
** Arid regions
**Drought
* Dry or dry area, relating to legal prohibition of selling, serving, or imbibing alcoholic beverages
* Dry humor, deadpan
* Dryness (medica ...
(for instance, in reference to wood
Wood is a structural tissue/material found as xylem in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulosic fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin t ...
). Another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre.
Conversions
:
A cubic metre of pure water at the temperature of maximum density (3.983 °C) and standard atmospheric pressure
Atmospheric pressure, also known as air pressure or barometric pressure (after the barometer), is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere (symbol: atm) is a unit of pressure defined as , which is equivalent to 1,013. ...
(101.325 kPa) has a mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
of , or one tonne
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the s ...
. At 0 °C, the freezing point of water, a cubic metre of water has slightly less mass, 999.85 kilograms.
A cubic metre is sometimes abbreviated to , , , , , , when superscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, wh ...
characters or markup cannot be used (e.g. in some typewritten documents and postings in Usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
newsgroups). The "cubic metre" symbol is encoded by 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 ...
at code point .
Multiples and submultiples
Multiples
;Cubic decametre
:the volume of a cube of side length one decametre (10 m)
:equal to a megalitre
:1 dam3 = = 1 ML
;Cubic hectometre
:the volume of a cube of side length one hectometre (100 m)
:equal to a gigalitre
:in civil engineering abbreviated MCM for million cubic metres
:1 hm3 = = 1 GL
;Cubic kilometre
:the volume of a cube of side length one kilometre ()
:equal to a teralitre
:1 km3 = = 1 TL (810713.19 acre-feet; 0.239913 cubic miles)
Submultiples
;Cubic decimetre
:the volume of a cube of side length one decimetre (0.1 m)
:equal to a litre
:1 dm3 = 0.001 m3 = 1 L
: (also known as DCM (=Deci Cubic Meter) in Rubber compound processing)
;Cubic centimetre[The cubic centimetre is the base unit of volume of the CGS system of units. The colloquial abbreviations "cc" and "ccm" are not SI but are common in some contexts such as cooking, ]engine displacement
Engine displacement is the measure of the cylinder volume swept by all of the pistons of a piston engine, excluding the combustion chambers. It is commonly used as an expression of an engine's size, and by extension as an indicator of the ...
and medicine.
:the volume of a cube of side length one centimetre (0.01 m)
:equal to a millilitre
:1 cm3 = = 10−6 m3 = 1 mL
;Cubic millimetre
:the volume of a cube of side length one millimetre (0.001 m)
:equal to a microlitre
:1 mm3 = = 10−9 m3 = 1 μL
See also
* Standard cubic foot
References
{{Orders of magnitude (volume)
Orders of magnitude (volume)
Units of volume
SI derived units