The square metre (international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or square meter (American spelling) is the unit of area in the International System of Units (SI) with symbol m2.[1] It is the area of a square with sides one metre in length.
| Square metre | |
|---|---|
 Visualization of a square metre | |
| General information | |
| Unit system | SI |
| Unit of | area |
| Symbol | m2 |
Adding and subtracting SI prefixes creates multiples and submultiples; however, as the unit is exponentiated, the quantities grow exponentially by the corresponding power of 10. For example, 1 kilometre is 103 (one thousand) times the length of 1 metre, but 1 square kilometre is (103)2 (106, one million) times the area of 1 square metre, and 1 cubic kilometre is (103)3 (109, one billion) cubic metres.
SI prefixes applied
edit
The square metre may be used with all SI prefixes used with the metre.
| Multiplication | Name | Symbol | Multiplication | Name | Symbol |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | square metre (centiare) | m2 | 100 | square metre (centiare) | m2 |
| 102 | square decametre (are) | dam2 | 10−2 | square decimetre | dm2 |
| 104 | square hectometre (hectare) | hm2 | 10−4 | square centimetre | cm2 |
| 106 | square kilometre | km2 | 10−6 | square millimetre | mm2 |
| 1012 | square megametre | Mm2 | 10−12 | square micrometre | μm2 |
| 1018 | square gigametre | Gm2 | 10−18 | square nanometre | nm2 |
| 1024 | square terametre | Tm2 | 10−24 | square picometre | pm2 |
| 1030 | square petametre | Pm2 | 10−30 | square femtometre | fm2 |
| 1036 | square exametre | Em2 | 10−36 | square attometre | am2 |
| 1042 | square zettametre | Zm2 | 10−42 | square zeptometre | zm2 |
| 1048 | square yottametre | Ym2 | 10−48 | square yoctometre | ym2 |
| 1054 | square ronnametre | Rm2 | 10−54 | square rontometre | rm2 |
| 1060 | square quettametre | Qm2 | 10−60 | square quectometre | qm2 |
Unicode characters
editUnicode has several characters used to represent metric area units, but these are for compatibility with East Asian character encodings and are not meant to be used in new documents.[2]
- U 33A1 ㎡ SQUARE M SQUARED
- U 33A2 ㎢ SQUARE KM SQUARED
- U 3378 ㍸ SQUARE DM SQUARED
- U 33A0 ㎠ SQUARE CM SQUARED
- U 339F ㎟ SQUARE MM SQUARED
Instead, the Unicode superscript U 00B2 ² SUPERSCRIPT TWO can be used, as in m².
Conversions
editOne square metre is equal to:
- 0.000001 square kilometre (km2)
- 10000 square centimetres (cm2)
- 0.0001 hectares (ha)
- 0.001 decares (daa)
- 0.01 ares (a)
- 0.1 deciares (da)
- 1 centiare (ca)
- 0.000247105381 acres
- 0.0247105381 cents
- 1.195990 square yards
- 10.763911 square feet
- 1550.0031 square inches
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ David R. Lide, ed. (2010), "INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS", CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (90th ed.)
- ^ Unicode Consortium (2019). "The Unicode Standard 12.0 – CJK Compatibility ❰ Range: 3300—33FF ❱" (PDF). Unicode.org. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
External links
edit- BIPM (SI maintenance agency) (home page)
- BIPM brochure (SI reference)