Zhang (Chinese) to Centimeters (zhang to cm)
1 zhang (Chinese) equals 333.3333333 centimeters (rounded).
How to convert zhang (Chinese) to centimeters
To convert zhang (Chinese) to centimeters, multiply the number of zhang (Chinese) by 333.3333333. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.003.
centimeters = zhang (Chinese) × 333.3333333
Example: 10 zhang (Chinese) = 3,333.333333 centimeters.
About these units
Zhang (Chinese) (zhang)
Ten chi, 10/3 m (about 3.33 m) in the modern market system.
Ten chi made one zhang, so the unit was always a measure of the human scale of buildings and cloth rather than of personal reach. It turns up in Chinese architecture as a way to describe the width of a bay and the height of walls and pillars. Since the chi itself changed from dynasty to dynasty, the zhang changed in step with it and had no independent standard.
Republican law fixed it twice. In 1915 the Republic of China set it at about 3.2 m, and in 1930 the figure was revised to exactly 10/3 m, about 3.33 m, which is the value used here. Mainland China uses it rarely today, and everyday speech tends toward meters. The Japanese jo is built the same way from ten shaku, giving about 3.03 m, which shows how a shared structure produced different lengths.
1 zhang (Chinese) = 3.333333333 meters (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Zhang (unit); Wikipedia: Chinese units of measurement
Centimeter (cm)
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
- Centimeters to zhang (Chinese) (reverse)
- Zhang (Chinese) to meters
- Zhang (Chinese) to kilometers
- Zhang (Chinese) to millimeters
- Zhang (Chinese) to inches
- Zhang (Chinese) to feet
- Zhang (Chinese) to yards
- Zhang (Chinese) to miles
- Meters to centimeters
- Kilometers to centimeters
- Millimeters to centimeters
- Inches to centimeters
- Feet to centimeters
- Yards to centimeters
- Miles to centimeters
- Micrometers to centimeters
- Nanometers to centimeters
- Nautical miles to centimeters
- Pixels (CSS) to centimeters
- Light-years to centimeters
See all length units.