Centimeters to Angstroms (cm to Å)

1 centimeter equals 100,000,000 angstroms exactly.

1 centimeter = 100,000,000 angstroms

How to convert centimeters to angstroms

To convert centimeters to angstroms, multiply the number of centimeters by 100,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply angstroms by 1×10⁻⁸.

angstroms = centimeters × 100,000,000

Example: 10 centimeters = 1,000,000,000 angstroms.

About these units

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Angstrom (Å)

ScientificTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One ten-billionth of a meter (0.1 nm). Named after Anders Ångström and used for atomic and molecular sizes and bond lengths.

Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom (1814-1874) charted the solar spectrum in 1868 in multiples of one ten-millionth of a millimeter, and solar physicists later named that interval after him. It equals 10 to the minus 10 meter, 0.1 nanometer or 100 picometers. Atoms and bonds fit it well: hydrogen is about 0.5 angstrom in covalent radius, and visible light spans roughly 4000 to 7000 angstroms.

The unit's size was not always exact. In 1907 the International Angstrom was fixed as 1/6438.4696 of the cadmium red line wavelength, a definition the 7th CGPM endorsed in 1927. The 1960 redefinition of the meter by a spectral line made it exactly 10 to the minus 10 meter, and NIST lists the conversion as exact. A later X-ray version, the angstrom star of 1965, was obsolete within about ten years. The unit was listed as acceptable by NIST and BIPM until 2019 but is absent from the 9th SI Brochure, and nanometers and picometers are slowly replacing it.

1 angstrom = 1×10⁻¹⁰ meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Angstrom; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8; Wikipedia: Picometre

Related conversions

See all length units.