How many meters are in a centimeter

Throughout my life I've imagined a short meter ruler in my science class, estimating how many other measurements could be tied to one centimeter. The answer varies, depending on the source.A centimeter is a unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), the current form of the metric system. It is defined as 1/100 meters. It is denoted as cm. Originally the term centimeter was the unit of length for millimeters, and the term centi-millimeter was the unit of length for centimeters.

Meter

History/origin: Originally, in 1793, the meter was defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. This changed in 1889, when the International prototype metre was established as the length of a prototype meter bar (made of an alloy of 90% platinum and 10% iridium) measured at the melting point of ice. In 1960, the meter was again redefined, this time in terms of a certain number of wavelengths of a certain emission line of krypton-86.

The current definition of the meter is effectively the same as the definition that was adopted in 1983, with slight modifications due to the change in definition of the second.Current use: The centimeter, like the meter, is used in all sorts of applications worldwide (in countries that have undergone metrication) in instances where a smaller denomination of the meter is required. Height is commonly measured in centimeters outside of countries like the United States. (Source:www.unitconverters.net)

Unit

Convert 37 centimeters to meters. Let me write this over. 37, and I'll write centi in a different color to emphasize the prefix. 37 centimeters, and we want to convert it to meters. So we really just have to remind ourselves what the prefix centi means. Centi literally means 1/100th, or one hundredth of a meter. So this is really saying 37 hundredth meters, so let's write it that way. This is literally 37/100 of a meter. So 1/100 meters. These are equivalent statements. So what are 37/100 of a meter? Well, that's going to be 37/100 of a meter, which can be rewritten as, if you wanted to write it as a decimal, that's 0. you could view it as 3/10 and 7/100, or 37/100. So 0.37, 0.37 meters. Another way that you could have thought about this is look, I'm going to go from centimeters to meters. I have 100. I need 100 centimeters to get to one meter, so I'm going to have to divide by 100 in order to figure out how many meters I have. And you should always do a reality check.

If I convert centimeters to meters, should I get a larger number or a smaller number? Well, however many centimeters I have, I'm going to have a fewer number of meters. Meters is a larger unit. So you should have a smaller value here, and it should be a smaller value by a factor of 100. So you literally could have started off with 37 centimeters. Let me write it this way, 37 centimeters. And actually, let's go through a couple of the units right over here. Now, if you wanted to turn it to decimeters, so this is 1/100. Decimeters, one over 1/10. So you would divide. This would be 3.7 decimeters. Let me write this as 3.7 decimeters. And a decimeter is 1/10 of a meter, so you would divide by 10 again. So this is 0.37 meters. So one way to think about it is to go from centimeters to meters, you're going to divide by 100. Dividing by 100, you would move the decimal space over to the left two times. Doing it once divides by 10. Doing it twice divides by 100. So you get to 0.37 meters. (Source: www.khanacademy.org)