Centimetre

A centimetre (the American spelling is centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI) measurement system. It is equal to one hundredth of a metre. Centi- is placed in front to say 'a hundredth'. The centimeter is the base unit of length in the old centimeter-gram-second (CGS) system of units.

The centimetre is usually used to measure things that are too big for millimetre but too small for metres. A centimetre is close to the length of a fingernail. 

Similarities to other units of length
1 centimetre is equal to:
 10 millimetres
 0.01 metre (1 metre is equal to 100 centimetres)
 about 0.393700787401575 inch (1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimetres) Inch - from Eric Weisstein's World of Physics
1 cubic centimetre is equal to 1 millilitre, under the SI system of units.

Uses of centimetre
The centimetre is also used:
 sometimes, to measure how much rain has fallen into a rain gauge;"Rain Measurement, Rain Gauge, Wireless Rain Gauge, Rain Gage, Rain Gauge Data ". Weathershack.com.
 for heights of people, especially athletes, in metric nations;
 in  maps, centimetres are used to change from map scale to real-world scale of landscapes (kilometres).

Unicode symbols
The centimetre has Unicode symbols so it can be written in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters.  CJK Compatibility excerpt from The Unicode Standard, Version 4.1.
 centimetre (㎝) - code 339D
 square centimetre (㎠) - code 33A0
 cubic centimetre (㎤) - code 33A4

They are placed into one character, and it is mostly used with East Asian fonts.

References

Other websites
 CJK Compatibility excerpt from The Unicode Standard, Version 4.4 and co-exterior users.

Category:Units of length
Category:SI units