Stadia to Centimeters (stad to cm)

1 stadion equals 19,200 centimeters exactly.

1 stadion = 19,200 centimeters

How to convert stadia to centimeters

To convert stadia to centimeters, multiply the number of stadia by 19,200. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.00005208333333 (rounded).

centimeters = stadia × 19,200

Example: 10 stadia = 192,000 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the stadion varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Stadion (stad)

Ancient GreekHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

The length of the footrace track at Olympia, about 192 m. Other Greek cities used slightly different stadia, from roughly 150 to 210 m.

From the Greek word stadion came the Latin stadium and the English stade, and eventually the stadium where athletes compete. It was the footrace track, and as a distance it was defined, according to Herodotus, as 600 Greek feet. Because the foot differed between cities, the stadion did too. The Olympic version is put at about 192 m, which one table describes as 200 Heracles steps, a proposal from Carl Lehmann-Haupt in 1929.

Estimates for other stadia show how loose the unit is. A figure near 185 m is the most common convergence for the Ptolemaic or Attic stadion, while Babylonian-Persian and Phoenician-Egyptian values reach about 196 and 209 m, and an itinerary stadion near 157 m has been argued for road distances. The overall range is roughly 150 to 210 m. The choice matters for judging Eratosthenes' measurement of the Earth. Eight stadia made a Roman mile, and the medieval stadium came to mean the furlong, about 201 m in modern terms.

1 stadion = 192 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Stadion (unit); Wikipedia: Ancient Greek units of measurement

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

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