The cubic metre (in
Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the
International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
) is the unit of
volume in the
International System of Units
The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. E ...
(SI).
[ Its symbol is m3.][ Bureau International de Poids et Mesures.]
Derived units expressed in terms of base units
". 2014. Accessed 7 August 2014. It is the volume of a cube
In geometry, a cube is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. Viewed from a corner it is a hexagon and its net is usually depicted as a cross.
The cube is the only r ...
with edges one metre in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefixes, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure
Dry measures are units of volume to measure bulk commodities that are not fluids and that were typically shipped and sold in standardized containers such as barrels. They have largely been replaced by the units used for measuring volumes in the me ...
(for instance, in reference to wood). Another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre.
Conversions
:
A cubic metre of pure water at the temperature of maximum density (3.98 °C) and standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kPa) has a mass of , or one tonne. At 0 °C, the freezing point of water, a cubic metre of water has slightly less mass, 999.972 kilograms.
A cubic metre is sometimes abbreviated to , , , , , , when superscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
s or markup
Markup or mark-up can refer to:
* Markup language, a standardized set of notations used to annotate a plain-text document's content to give information regarding the structure of the text or instructions for how it is to be displayed
** Lightweigh ...
cannot be used (e.g. in some typewritten documents and postings in Usenet newsgroups). The "cubic metre" symbol is encoded by Unicode at code point .
Multiples and submultiples
Multiples
;Cubic decametre
:the volume of a cube of side length one decametre (10 m)
:equal to a megalitre
The litre (international spelling) or liter (American English spelling) (SI symbols L and l, other symbol used: ℓ) is a metric unit of volume. It is equal to 1 cubic decimetre (dm3), 1000 cubic centimetres (cm3) or 0.001 cubic metre (m3). ...
:1 dam3 = = 1 ML
;Cubic hectometre
:the volume of a cube of side length one hectometre (100 m)
:equal to a gigalitre
:in civil engineering abbreviated MCM for million cubic metres
:1 hm3 = = 1 GL
;Cubic kilometre
:the volume of a cube of side length one kilometre ()
:equal to a teralitre
:1 km3 = = 1 TL (810713.19 acre-feet; 0.239913 cubic miles)
Submultiples
;Cubic decimetre
:the volume of a cube of side length one decimetre (0.1 m)
:equal to a litre
:1 dm3 = 0.001 m3 = 1 L
: (also known as DCM (=Deci Cubic Meter) in Rubber compound processing)
;Cubic centimetre[The cubic centimetre is the base unit of volume of the CGS system of units. The colloquial abbreviations "cc" and "ccm" are not SI but are common in some contexts such as cooking, engine displacement and medicine.]
:the volume of a cube of side length one centimetre (0.01 m)
:equal to a millilitre
:1 cm3 = = 10−6 m3 = 1 mL
;Cubic millimetre
:the volume of a cube of side length one millimetre (0.001 m)
:equal to a microlitre
:1 mm3 = = 10−9 m3 = 1 μL
Notes
{{Orders of magnitude (volume)
Orders of magnitude (volume)
Units of volume
SI derived units