Rods to Centimeters (rd to cm)

1 rod equals 502.92 centimeters exactly.

1 rod = 502.92 centimeters

How to convert rods to centimeters

To convert rods to centimeters, multiply the number of rods by 502.92. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.001988387815 (rounded).

centimeters = rods × 502.92

Example: 10 rods = 5,029.2 centimeters.

About these units

Rod (rd)

US & ImperialTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

16.5 feet or 5.5 yards (5.0292 m), also called a pole or perch. A quarter of a chain; a basic unit of English land measurement.

Three names, rod, pole and perch, all describe the same stick. Perch comes from the Roman pertica, a ten-foot measuring pole of about 2.96 m, while rod and pole name the physical staff that farmers and surveyors carried. A statute from around the thirteenth or fourteenth century defined the perch as five and a half ells. In the thirteenth century English perches ranged from 18 to 24 feet, and a parliamentary report of 1820 still found lengths between 16.5 and 25 feet in local use.

The version that won out is 16.5 feet, or 5.5 yards, exactly 5.0292 m, which is the figure used here. It is a quarter of a chain, 40 to a furlong and 320 to a mile, and 160 square rods make an acre. Ireland kept a longer perch of 21 feet. The rod faded from legal use in the UK with metrication from 1965, but allotments are still measured in square poles, canoeists count portages in rods, and pipeline easements and US property descriptions still use it.

1 rod = 5.0292 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Rod (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 (length conversion factors)

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

Related conversions

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