We also have teaspoons and tablespoons. A teaspoon is 5 ml, a tablespoon is 1 cl.
The former is a bit imprecise, the latter is outright wrong, given that there are 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon.
1 teaspoon = 0.492892159 centiliters
1 tablespoon = 1.478 cL
And for those inclined to argue about the placement of punctuation inside or outside the quotation marks, the abbreviation for liters is "L", not "l".
Well, they aren't really teaspoon and tablespoon, they are teelusikka and ruokalusikka (which are the Finnish words for those items, respectively). A teelusikka is exactly 5ml and a ruokalusikka is exactly 1cl.
That's very interesting. So the latter is exactly two of the former, as contrasted with a multiplier of 3 for the american (approximate) analogs.
Do I get extra respect for the alliteration?As an aside: the past several pages of discussion has got me thinking, and I realized that after 35+ years in laboratories, identifying the less frequently encountered term between the pair {decimeter, centiliter} is frighteningly easy. Though both are not encountered routinely, I have spoken or written "decimeter" probably two or three times a year. I cannot think of a single time where I have read or used "centiliter" in a professional setting.
I would have thought is would have been the reverse, as volumes are much more important in applied chemistry settings than lengths. On the other hand, most of my use of "decimeter" has been to remind fresh graduates what a liter "looks like" in an easily visualized regular vessel.