Miles to centimetres
One mile is 160,934.399999999994 centimetres, and this shows the working rather than just the answer. Nothing you type here leaves your browser — it is worked out on your own device, so there is nothing to send and nothing to log.
The factor
One mile is 160,934.399999999994 centimetres. That is the whole of the conversion: multiply by it, and nothing else happens.
And it is exact
Not rounded, not measured, not a convention that might be revised. The factor above is the definition, so an answer from it is as exact as the number you typed.
The mile is 5,280 feet, so exactly 1,609.344 m.
The number in your head
Most people use 160,000 for this, which is the factor to two significant figures. It is low by 0.5806% — 5.806 centimetres too few in every thousand, and 58.06 in every ten thousand.
Going the other way
The reverse is not this sum backwards in your head. It is a different factor, 0.000006213712, and dividing by one is not the same as multiplying by a rounded version of the other.
Rounded, the way back is 0.00000621, which is low by 0.0597%. So the two roundings do not cancel: go out and back with both and you do not land where you started.
How many of those decimals mean anything
The box above will give you ten decimal places because it can. Whether they mean anything is decided by your measurement, not by the arithmetic.
If you measured to the nearest mile, your figure is already uncertain by half of one — so the answer is uncertain by about 80,467.2 centimetres, and every digit past that is decoration. Quoting 198,683.172864 when you measured with a tape is claiming a precision the tape never had.
Where these two sit
Miles and centimetres both measure distance, which is why they can be converted at all. A conversion between families — a length into a weight — is not a conversion, it is a question with a missing quantity in it.
The unit converter pairs miles with kilometres rather than with centimetres, because that is the conversion people ask for most. This page exists because a good many ask for this one instead.
Other conversions from miles
kilometres · feet · nautical miles · metres · millimetres · yards · inches