Liters to Centiliters (L to cL)

1 liter equals 100 centiliters exactly.

1 liter = 100 centiliters

How to convert liters to centiliters

To convert liters to centiliters, multiply the number of liters by 100. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply centiliters by 0.01.

centiliters = liters × 100

Example: 10 liters = 1,000 centiliters.

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

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

Centiliter (cL)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a liter (10 mL). Used on drink labels across Europe.

Centi- means one hundredth, so a centiliter is 0.01 liter, which is 10 milliliters or 10 cubic centimeters. Among the liter's smaller multiples it is the one that suits glassware: it indicates the capacity of drinking glasses and small bottles, and shot-sized servings of alcohol are often 3 cL.

The unit sits between the milliliter, used for medicine and small packaging, and the deciliter, which is ten times larger at 10 cL. The figure used here is exactly 0.01 liter. Because 1 cL is 10 cubic centimeters, a 33 cL container holds 330 mL, and three such measures of 3 cL come to 9 cL. Ten centiliters make one deciliter.

1 centiliter = 0.01 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Litre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix

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