How to Convert Feet & Inches to Meters & Centimeters

Americans use the old British Imperial measuring system of feet and inches for linear distances. Even a number of Canadian firms do. Most scientific research (and most construction outside of North America) uses the metric system of meters and centimeters. Converting between the two is simple arithmetic, but very important. NASA contractors caused the Mars Explorer mission to fail because one used feet and inches, the other metric.

Things You'll Need

• Calculator

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Instructions

1. • 1

     Take the number of feet in the item being measured and multiply by 12, to get inches.

   • 2

     Add any additional inches to the result of Step 1. For example, 5 feet, 5 inches is 5 x 12 = 60, plus 5 = 65 inches.

   • 3

     Multiply the inches by 2.54 to get centimeters. For the example above, 65 x 2.54 = 165.1 centimeters.

   • 4

     Divide centimeters by 100 to get meters. The 165.1 centimeters above is 1.651 meters.