Electricity converters
Electric Resistivity Converter
Convert resistivity units: ohm-meter, ohm-cm, microhm-cm and circular-mil-ohm/ft.
Result
1.00000e-8 Ω·m
1 µΩ·cm = 1.00000e-8 Ω·m
All units for this value
| Unit | Symbol | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Ohm meter | Ω·m | 1.00000e-8 |
| Kilohm meter | kΩ·m | 1.00000e-11 |
| Ohm centimeter | Ω·cm | 0.000001 |
| Microhm meter | µΩ·m | 0.01 |
| Microhm centimeter | µΩ·cm | 1 |
| Nanohm meter | nΩ·m | 10 |
| Ohm inch | Ω·in | 3.93701e-7 |
| Circular mil ohm per foot | Ω·cmil/ft | 6.0153 |
| Abohm centimeter | abΩ·cm | 1000 |
| Statohm centimeter | statΩ·cm | 1.11265e-18 |
| Siemens per meter (conductivity) | S/m | 100000000 |
| Siemens per centimeter (conductivity) | S/cm | 1000000 |
About this calculator
Electric resistivity describes how strongly a material opposes the flow of current for a given size, independent of the shape of the sample being measured. This converter switches between the SI ohm-meter, smaller lab-scale units like microhm-centimeter, US wire units such as circular-mil-ohm-per-foot, and reciprocal conductivity units like siemens per meter.
How it works in plain English
Resistivity is a material property rather than a component rating, so the converter anchors every unit to ohm-meter and rescales your entered value through that common base. Metric variants such as ohm-centimeter, microhm-meter, and nanohm-meter follow straightforward powers of ten, while ohm-inch simply swaps the meter for an inch using the standard 0.0254 m length. Circular-mil-ohm-per-foot is a specialised US wire-industry unit that pairs a foot of length with a cross-section measured in circular mils, and it carries a small conversion factor of about 1.662426113 × 10⁻⁹ ohm-meter per unit.
This converter also lists conductivity units, siemens per meter and siemens per centimeter, directly inside the resistivity list because the two quantities are reciprocals of one another: resistivity in ohm-meter multiplied by conductivity in siemens per meter always equals 1. When you convert into one of these reciprocal entries, the tool inverts the numeric value instead of simply rescaling it. Because dividing by zero has no defined answer, entering a resistivity of exactly zero makes every reciprocal conductivity entry in the table show a dash rather than a number.
Choose your from and to units, enter a value, and the converted resistivity appears immediately alongside a table listing that same figure across every supported unit. A precision control adjusts how many decimal places are displayed, and a swap button reverses the two selected units in a single click.
The formula
- value_in_target = value_in_source × (source factor to Ω·m) ÷ (target factor to Ω·m)
- 1 Ω·cm = 0.01 Ω·m
- 1 Ω·cmil/ft = 1.662426113 × 10⁻⁹ Ω·m
- conductivity (S/m) = 1 ÷ resistivity (Ω·m)
Worked example
Suppose a datasheet lists a wire alloy's resistivity as 1.68 microhm-centimeter, a typical figure for annealed copper, and an engineer wants that in ohm-meter for a standard resistance calculation. Multiplying by the microhm-centimeter factor of 1e-8 gives 1.68 × 10⁻⁸ Ω·m.
Entering 1.68 into the microhm-centimeter field with ohm-meter selected as the target returns 1.68 × 10⁻⁸ immediately. As a quick sanity check, multiplying that result back by 1e8 recovers the original 1.68 microhm-centimeter reading, confirming the conversion was applied correctly. The full unit table also shows this same resistivity as approximately 60.1 million siemens per meter in the reciprocal conductivity entry, computed by inverting that ohm-meter value, and it is worth scanning that all-units table further to see the same figure rendered in ohm-centimeter and nanohm-meter as well, all from the single figure that was typed in.
Electrical resistivity of common materials at room temperature
| Material | Resistivity (Ω·m) |
|---|---|
| Silver | 1.59 × 10⁻⁸ |
| Copper | 1.68 × 10⁻⁸ |
| Aluminium | 2.82 × 10⁻⁸ |
| Iron | 9.71 × 10⁻⁸ |
| Nichrome | 1.10 × 10⁻⁶ |
| Silicon (pure, intrinsic) | ≈2,300 |
| Glass | 10¹⁰ to 10¹⁴ |
Standard materials science reference values
Frequently asked questions
Why does resistivity include conductivity units in its list?
Resistivity and conductivity describe the same physical property from opposite directions, so it's convenient to convert straight from one into the other without a separate calculation. Selecting a conductivity unit as the target tells the converter to invert the entered resistivity value rather than merely rescale it by a factor.
Why does a dash appear when I enter zero and select a conductivity unit?
Conductivity is mathematically the reciprocal of resistivity, and dividing 1 by zero has no finite answer. Rather than displaying an error or a misleading number, the converter shows a dash in that field to indicate the value is undefined at exactly zero resistivity.
What's the difference between resistance and resistivity?
Resistance depends on a specific object's length and cross-sectional area as well as its material, while resistivity is a property of the material alone, independent of shape or size. Multiplying resistivity by length and dividing by cross-sectional area gives the resistance of a particular wire or component.
Why is circular-mil-ohm-per-foot used in the US wire industry?
US wire gauge tables traditionally measure cross-sectional area in circular mils and length in feet, so expressing resistivity in matching units lets engineers compute a wire's resistance without converting to metric first. This converter includes it alongside the SI and CGS units so figures from those tables translate directly.
How precise are the conversion factors used here?
Metric prefixes such as kilo, micro, and nano are exact powers of ten, and the inch-based and circular-mil units use standard defined length conversions. The statohm-centimeter figure derives from the exact relationship between electrostatic and SI units, so results should match published references to several significant figures.
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