Square Centimeters
Abbreviation/Symbol:
cm²
sq cm
Unit of:
Worldwide use:
A square centimeter (cm²) is the area of a square 1cm on each side, or 0.0001m². It is 0.155 square inches.
There are 100 square millimeters in a square centimeter, and 10,000 square centimeters in a square meter, not 100. Area units scale by the square of the length factor.
Definition:
A square centimeter (cm²) is the area of a square one centimeter on each side, and a centimeter is a hundredth of a meter. It takes 10,000 of them to make a square meter, not 100.
Origin:
Square centimeters come from the metric system, devised in France in the 1790s. There are 10,000 of them in a square meter, because areas scale by the square: 100 × 100.
The centimeter, which is one-hundredth of a meter, became one of the fundamental units of length in the metric system. As the metric system expanded to include units for area, the square centimeter emerged as the unit for measuring small areas. It represents the area of a square with sides measuring one centimeter each.
Common references:
A United States nickel (5 cent) coin has the area of approximately 3cm²
The cornea of a human eye is approximately 1 cm²
Usage context:
A square centimeter (cm²) is the area of a 1 centimeter square, and 10,000 of them make a square meter. Small areas are given this way: a sheet of A4, 21 centimeters by 29.7 centimeters, is 623.7 cm².