Summary
A centimetre (international spelling) or centimeter (American spelling) (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 1/100. 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 most commonly measured in centimetres. A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an average adult person. {| |- |rowspan=4 valign=top|1 centimetre |= 10 millimetres |- |= 0.01 metres |- |= 0.393700787401574803149606299212598425196850 inches |- | (There are exactly 2.54 centimetres in one inch.) |} One millilitre is defined as one cubic centimetre, under the SI system of units. 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 = 1.113e-12 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. For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for: centimetre – square centimetre – cubic centimetre – They are mostly used only with East Asian fixed-width CJK fonts, because they are equal in size to one Chinese character.
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Related concepts (22)
Centimetre
A centimetre (international spelling) or centimeter (American spelling) (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 1/100. 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.
International System of Units
The International System of Units, internationally known by the abbreviation SI (for Système International), is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. Established and maintained by the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM), it is the only system of measurement with an official status in nearly every country in the world, employed in science, technology, industry, and everyday commerce.
Metre
The metre (or meter in American spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). The metre was originally defined in 1791 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole along a great circle, so the Earth's circumference is approximately 40000 km. In 1799, the metre was redefined in terms of a prototype metre bar. The actual bar used was changed in 1889. In 1960, the metre was redefined in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86.
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