The stere or stère (st) is a

unit Unit may refer to: Arts and entertainment * UNIT, a fictional military organization in the science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' * Unit of action, a discrete piece of action (or beat) in a theatrical presentation Music * ''Unit'' (a ...

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). Th ...

in the original metric system equal to one cubic metre. The stere is typically used for measuring large quantities of firewood or other cut wood, while the cubic meter is used for uncut wood. The name was coined from the Greek στερεός ''stereós'', "solid", in 1795 in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

as a metric analogue to the

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. The unit was introduced to remove regional disparities of this former unit, for which the length could vary greatly from 6 to 13.5 m. It is not part of the modern metric system (SI) and is no longer a legal unit in France, but remains used in the commerce of firewood.

Background

The correspondence between stere and cubic meter of stacked wood is imprecise because it depends on the length of the logs used and on how irregular they are. The stere corresponds to 1 m³ of wood, made exclusively with logs of 1 m in length, all stacked parallel and neatly arranged. If the length of the logs is less than 1 m, the volume of visible wood decreases because the voids are better occupied. Thus the "stere" no longer corresponds to 1 m³, but to 0.8 m³ for logs of 50 cm, 0.7 m³ for logs of 33 cm and 0.6 m³ for logs of 25 cm. In Dutch and German, a closely related unit called ''kuub'' (Dutch), short for ''kubieke meter'', or "Kubikmeter" (German) which differs from a stere. Whereas a "kuub" or "Kubikmeter" is a solid cubic metre, as it was traditionally used for wood, a stere (in German: Raummeter) is a cubic metre pile of woodblocks. A stere or Raummeter is less than a kuub or full cubic metre of wood, because the spaces between the woodblocks are included in a stere, while they do not count towards a kuub or Kubikmeter. In Finnish, the same unit is known as ''motti'' (from Swedish ''mått'', "measure"). The stere as used in contexts outside the timber industry is not subject to the same ambiguity. In particular, stere and kilostere are sometimes used in hydrology, as the kilostere (1000 m³ or megalitre) is a slightly smaller metric analogue of an

acre-foot 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 acre-f ...

(approximately 1233 m³), similar to the relationship of the

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 ...

to the short ton.

References

Units of volume Non-SI metric units Logging {{Forestry-stub ja:ステール

Background

See also

References