Centimetre

A centimetre or centimeter, with SI symbol cm, is a unit of length in the International System of Units equal to one hundredth of a metre, centi- being the SI prefix for a factor of. Equivalently, there are 100 centimetres in 1 metre. The centimetre was the base unit of length in the now deprecated 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; for instance, human height is commonly measured in centimetres. A centimetre is approximately the width of the fingernail of an average adult person.

Equivalence to other units of length

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 = farads
in maps, centimetres are used to make conversions from map scale to real world scale
to represent second moment of areas
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, = 1/. The SI unit of wavenumber is the inverse metre, m⁻¹.
Unicode symbols

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

These characters are each equal in size to one Chinese character and are typically used only with East Asian, fixed-width CJK fonts.