Centimetre should not be confused with Millimetre.
| centimetre | |
| Symbol: | cm |
| Standard: | SI |
| Quantity: | length |
| Units1: | millimetres |
| Inunits1: | 10 mm |
| Units2: | imperial & US system |
| Inunits2: | ~1cm (00inches) |
thumb|330px|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 spelling), 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 .[1] 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.[2] [3] A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an average adult person.
| 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:
For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for:[6]
These characters are each equal in size to one Chinese character and are typically used only with East Asian, fixed-width CJK fonts.