Cubic Millimeters to Liters (mm³ to L)

1 cubic millimeter equals 0.000001 liters exactly.

1 cubic millimeter = 0.000001 liters

How to convert cubic millimeters to liters

To convert cubic millimeters to liters, multiply the number of cubic millimeters by 0.000001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply liters by 1,000,000.

liters = cubic millimeters × 0.000001

Example: 10 cubic millimeters = 0.00001 liters.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Cubic Millimeter (mm³)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One thousandth of a milliliter. Used for tiny volumes.

Geometry supplies the name: a cubic millimeter is the volume of a cube whose edges are each one millimeter long, equal to 10 to the minus 9 cubic meters. Because 1,000 of them fill one cubic centimeter, it is one thousandth of a milliliter, and it is the smallest volume that is commonly written as a cube of length rather than with a liter prefix.

Its tidy equality with the microliter rests on a decision taken in 1964, when the 12th General Conference on Weights and Measures went back to the original definition of the liter as exactly one cubic decimeter. From 1901 until then the liter had been tied to the space taken by a kilogram of water, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, so volumes in cubic millimeters and microliters differed very slightly. Today 1 mm3 equals 1 microliter exactly, and the figure used here, 0.000001 liter, follows directly from that.

1 cubic millimeter = 0.000001 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Cubic metre; Wikipedia: Litre

Liter (L)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One cubic decimeter (1,000 cm³). The everyday metric unit of volume for drinks, fuel and cooking.

The liter was born in revolutionary France. In 1795 it was introduced as a republican unit and defined as one cubic decimeter, while the gram was tied to a cubic centimeter of water. The name comes from the older French litron, itself descended from a Byzantine Greek unit of weight, not volume. A small revision of the decimeter in 1798 left the first liter about 1.000974 of today's cubic decimeter, and in 1879 the international metric authorities adopted the liter with the symbol l.

The liter then took a strange detour. In 1901 it was redefined as the space taken up by one kilogram of pure water at its densest, which made it about 1.000028 cubic decimeters, and that muddled definition lasted until 1964, when it was restored to exactly one cubic decimeter. A capital L was added as an alternative symbol in 1979 because a lowercase l is easy to mistake for the digit 1, and NIST says L is the symbol to use in the United States. A liter of water is close to a kilogram, which is why a one-liter bottle feels like a kilo in the hand.

The liter is the reference unit for volume on this site.

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; NIST Guide to the SI, Chapter 5: units outside the SI

Related conversions

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