The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is m. It is the volume of a cube with edges one metre in length. An alternative name, which allowed a different usage with metric prefixes, was the stère, still sometimes used for dry measure (for instance, in reference to wood). Another alternative name, no longer widely used, was the kilolitre.
A cubic metre of pure water at the temperature of maximum density (3.983 °C) and standard atmospheric pressure (101.325 kPa) has a mass of or one tonne. At 0 °C, the freezing point of water, a cubic metre of water has slightly less mass, 999.972 kilograms.
A cubic metre is sometimes abbreviated to m^3, M3, m**3, cum, m3, CBM, cbm when superscript characters or markup cannot be used (e.g. in some typewritten documents and postings in Usenet newsgroups). The "cubic metre" symbol is encoded by Unicode at code point ㎥ SQUARE M CUBED.
Multiples and submultiples
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