Decameter (dam)

Metric (SI)Current unit

10 meters. An official SI prefix combination that is rarely used.

1 decameter = 10 meters (exactly).

About the decameter

Spelling is the first complication with this unit. The BIPM and most English-speaking countries write decametre or decameter with the symbol dam, while NIST and American style guides prefer deka, as in dekameter. Both mean ten meters, which is about 10.94 yards or 393.7 inches. Wikipedia's article says little about the unit's history, so no dates are given here.

Meteorologists find it practical for expressing the altitude of geopotential heights. The cubic decameter is used for large water volumes, because one cubic decameter is 1,000 cubic meters, or one megaliter. The are, an older metric land measure, is a square decameter, equal to 100 square meters. One technical atmosphere is also the pressure of a decameter of water. In the metric length series it sits between the meter and the hectometer at 100 m.

Sources: Wikipedia: Decametre; NIST: metric (SI) prefixes; Wikipedia: Metric prefix

Decameter conversion chart

1 decameter expressed in every other length unit:

More Metric (SI) units

• meter (length)
• kilometer (length)
• centimeter (length)
• millimeter (length)
• micrometer (length)
• nanometer (length)
• picometer (length)
• decimeter (length)
• hectometer (length)
• kilogram (weight & mass)
• gram (weight & mass)
• milligram (weight & mass)
• microgram (weight & mass)
• metric ton (weight & mass)
• quintal (weight & mass)
• carat (weight & mass)

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