The cubic metre (in

Commonwealth English The use of the English language in current and former member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations was largely inherited from British colonisation, with some exceptions. English serves as the medium of inter-Commonwealth relations. Many ...

and international spelling as used by the

International Bureau of Weights and Measures The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (french: Bureau international des poids et mesures, BIPM) is an intergovernmental organisation, through which its 59 member-states act together on measurement standards in four areas: chemistry ...

) or cubic meter (in

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States and in most circumstances ...

) is the unit of

volume Volume is a measure of occupied three-dimensional space. It is often quantified numerically using SI derived units (such as the cubic metre and litre) or by various imperial or US customary units (such as the gallon, quart, cubic inch). ...

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. ...

(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 ...

with edges one

metre The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pre ...

in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with

metric prefix A metric prefix is a unit prefix that precedes a basic unit of measure to indicate a multiple or submultiple of the unit. All metric prefixes used today are decadic. Each prefix has a unique symbol that is prepended to any unit symbol. The pr ...

es, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure (for instance, in reference to

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin ...

). 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 Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different ele ...

of , or one

tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...

. 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

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 cannot be used (e.g. in some typewritten documents and postings in

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

newsgroups). The "cubic metre" symbol is encoded by

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

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 :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 The acre-foot is a non- SI unit of volume equal to about commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water, and river flows. An acr ...

; 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 centimetreThe 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