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Centimetre

 
WordNet: centimetre
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a metric unit of length equal to one hundredth of a meter
  Synonyms: centimeter, cm


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Wikipedia: Centimetre
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1 centimetre =
SI units
10×10−3 m 10 mm
US customary / Imperial units
32.81×10^−3 ft 0.39370 in

A centimetre (American spelling: centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one hundredth of a metre, which is the current SI base unit of length. Centi is the SI prefix for a factor of 10−2.[1] Hence a centimetre can be written as 10 × 10−3 m (engineering notation) or 1E−2 m (scientific E notation) — meaning 10 × 101 mm or 1 m/100 respectively,centimetre-gram-second 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. A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an adult person.

1 centimetre

Contents

Equivalence to other units of length

A carpenters' ruler with centimetre divisions

1 centimetre is equal to:

  • 0.01 metre, which can be represented by 1.00 E-2 m (1 metre is equal to 100 centimetres)
  • about 0.393700787401575 inch (1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimetres) [2]

1 cubic centimetre is equal to 1 millilitre, under the current SI system of units.

Uses of centimetre

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 [3]
  • in the CGS system, the centimetre is used to measure capacitance, where 1 cm of capacitance = 1.113×10 − 12 Farad [4]
  • in maps, centimetres are used to make conversions from map scale to real world scale (kilometres)
  • to represent second moment of areas (cm^4)

Unicode symbols

For the purposes of compatibility with Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) characters, Unicode has symbols for: [5]

  • centimetre (㎝) - code 339D
  • square centimetre (㎠) - code 33A0
  • cubic centimetre (㎤) - code 33A4

They are only useful with East Asian fixed-width CJK fonts, because they are equal in size to one Chinese character.

See also

References


Translations: Centimetre
Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - centimeter

Français (French)
n. - centimètre

Deutsch (German)
n. - Zentimeter

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - εκατοστό (του μέτρου), πόντος

Italiano (Italian)
centimetro

Português (Portuguese)
n. - centímetro (m)
num. - centímetro

Русский (Russian)
сантиметр

Español (Spanish)
n. - centímetro

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - centimeter
num. - centimeter

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
公分, 厘米

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 公分, 釐米

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 센티미터

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - センチメートル

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮סנטימטר‬


 
 
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WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Centimetre" Read more
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