Cubic Centimetre

A cubic centimetre (or cubic centimeter in US English) (SI unit symbol: cm3; non-SI abbreviations: cc and ccm) is a commonly used unit of volume extending the derived SI-unit cubic metre, and corresponds to the volume of a cube measuring 1 cm × 1 cm × 1 cm. One cubic centimetre corresponds to a volume of 1⁄_1,000,000 of a cubic metre, or 1⁄_1,000 of a litre, or one millilitre; thus, 1 cm3 ≡ 1 ml. The mass of one cubic centimetre of water at 3.98 °C (the temperature at which it attains its maximum density) is roughly equal to one gram. Note that SI supports only the use of symbols and deprecates the use of any abbreviations for units. Hence cm3 is preferred to cc or ccm.

In many scientific fields, the use of cubic centimetres has been replaced by the millilitre. The medical and automotive fields are two of the few fields wherein the term cubic centimetre was never discontinued in the United States. Much of the automotive industry outside the U.S. has switched to using litres instead of cubic centimetres. In the United Kingdom, millilitres are used in preference to cubic centimetres in the medical field, but not the automotive. Most other English-speaking countries follow the UK example, but the use of cubic centimetres persists everywhere, especially in the automotive field.

There is currently a movement within the medical field to discontinue the use of cc in prescriptions and on medical documents as it can be mis-read as "00"; this could result in a hundredfold overdose of medication, which may be dangerous or even lethal. In the United States, such confusion accounts for 12.6% of all errors associated with medical abbreviations.

In automobile engines, "cc" refers to the total volume of its engine displacement in cubic centimetres. The displacement can be calculated using the formula

where the stroke and bore are measured in centimetres.

Conversions

• 1 millilitre = 1 cubic centimetre
• 1 litres = 1000 cubic centimetres
• 1 cubic inch = 2.543 ≈ 16.387 cubic centimetres.