Centimeters to Wa (Thai) (cm to wa)

1 centimeter equals 0.005 wa (Thai) exactly.

1 centimeter = 0.005 wa (Thai)

How to convert centimeters to wa (Thai)

To convert centimeters to wa (Thai), multiply the number of centimeters by 0.005. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply wa (Thai) by 200.

wa (Thai) = centimeters × 0.005

Example: 10 centimeters = 0.05 wa (Thai).

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

Wa (Thai) (wa)

ThaiTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

Exactly 2 meters, the Thai fathom. Used in land measurement alongside the rai.

Wa is the Thai fathom, a length of 2 meters. It belongs to a traditional Thai scale built on the human body, in which the khuep (span) is 25 cm, the sok (cubit) is 50 cm, and four sok make one wa, the span of outstretched arms.

Larger distances were counted in the sen, which is 20 wa, and the long road measure yot, equal to 400 sen. Surveyors working on the Royal Thai Survey Department cadastral survey, begun in 1896, tied these units to metric lengths, and the wa kept the round value of 2 m that it carries today.

Because the metric figure is exact, the old body-based uncertainty has gone. A wa still appears in land deeds and frontage descriptions, and in daily speech a plot may be described as so many wa wide. It is also the side of the square wa, which is 4 square meters.

1 wa (Thai) = 2 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Thai units of measurement; Wikipedia: Rai (unit)

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