Centimeters to Miles Converter

The centimeter is exactly one hundredth of a meter, written 0.01 m, and it is the unit most metric rulers and tape measures are marked in, with ten millimeters to one centimeter.

It appears on clothing labels, school rulers, rainfall reports and body measurements, and in medicine for wound sizes. A person's height is commonly recorded in centimeters on metric forms.

The factor between centimeters and inches is exact: one inch equals 2.54 centimeters. Results on this site are shown with up to six decimal places, so a value converted out and back can end one digit away.

The usual error is reading a millimeter figure as centimeters, which overstates a length tenfold, or treating square centimeters as if they scaled with centimeters rather than with their square.

Centimeters, millimeters and meters divide the same scale: millimeters suit engineering tolerances, centimeters suit height and clothing, and meters suit rooms and buildings. Choosing the wrong unit misplaces the decimal point by ten or a hundred, so the label matters as much as the figure.

The international mile is exactly 1,609.344 meters, or 1.609344 kilometers. It descends from the Roman mile of a thousand paces and remains the standard road distance in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Road signs and speed limits, distance markers on highways, running and cycling events and aviation track distances are quoted in miles in those countries. Nautical miles are separate and longer.

Since the mile is defined as 1,609.344 meters exactly, converting to kilometers or feet is exact arithmetic; only the printed result is rounded. A value converted to kilometers and back can return with a changed last digit.

The common error is using a statute mile where a nautical mile is meant, which understates the intended distance by about thirteen percent. Miles also measure length, not area or speed.

Miles measure road distance, kilometers do the same on metric roads, and nautical miles measure sea and air distance. A nautical mile is longer than a statute mile, so a flight quoted in the wrong one is misread by roughly thirteen percent.