Centimetre

From Encyclopedia Jr, free information reference for Kids

A centimetre (American spelling centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length that is equal to one hundredth of a metre, the current SI base unit of length. A centimetre is part of a metric system. It is the base unit in the centimetre-gram-second system of units. A corresponding unit of area is the square centimetre. A corresponding unit of volume is the cubic centimetre.

The centimetre is a now a non-standard factor, in that factors of 10³ are often preferred. However, it is practical unit of length for many everyday measurements. A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an adult person.

millimetre << centimetre << decimetre << metre << kilometre

[edit] Equivalence to other units of length

1 centimetre is equal to:

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

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

[edit] 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
• in the CGS system, the centimetre is used to measure capacitance
• in Canadian maps, centimeters are used to make conversions from map scale to real world scale(kilometers)

[edit] Unicode symbols

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

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

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

[edit] See also

• 1 E-2 m
• SI
• SI prefix
• Metric system
• Orders of magnitude
• Conversion of units, for comparison with other units of length

[edit] References

• CJK Compatibility excerpt from The Unicode Standard, Version 4.1.