Amanda, we have two responses for you:

Dear Amanda,

One mm is one "millimeter" or one one-thousandth of a meter (1 mm = 1/1000 m).

One cm is one "centimeter" or one one-hundredth of a meter  (1 cm = 1/100 m).

Therefore, 1 cm = 10 mm.  To convert mm to cm, divide the number of mm by 10 to get the number of cm.

Hope this helps!

Gabriel

Hi Amanda.

Metric measurements use the International System of Units (SI) prefixes. That means that mm means millimeter and cm means centimeter.

With SI, "milli" always means "one-thousandths" and "centi" always means "one-hundredths".

There is a larger table in this earlier web page of ours.

So to convert from mm into cm, you have to ask "how do I go from thousandths to hundredths?" You divide by ten. So 83 mm is 8.3 cm.

Stephen La Rocque. >