Convert foot² [ft²] to meter² [m²] • Area Converter • Common Unit Converters • Compact Calculator • Online Unit Converters (2025)

Magnetic Flux

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Overview

Area is a measure of the amount of space inside a two-dimensional boundary. It is used in mathematics, engineering, medicine, and other sciences, for example, to calculate cross-section areas of cells, atoms, or pipes (such as blood vessels or water pipes). In geography, it is used to measure and compare geographical objects such as cities, lakes, or countries. Population density calculations also use area: for humans, population density is the number of people per unit area.

Units

Square Meter

A square meter is the SI unit of area. It is defined as the area of a square with sides of one meter.

Unit Square

A unit square is a square with the sides one unit long. As a result, the area of a unit square is one. In the Cartesian plane, this square usually has coordinates of (0,0), (0,1), (1,0), and (1,1) in the real plane. In the complex plane they will be 0, 1, i, and i + 1, where i is the imaginary number.

Are

An are is a unit used to measure land in some European countries, CIS countries, and in Indonesia. It equals 100 square meters. It is known under different names in some regions. It is often used to measure smaller properties and public spaces where a hectare is too large.

Hectare

Hectares are also used to measure real estate, in particular, land area. One hectare equals a hundred ares or 10,000 square meters. Hectares have been used since the French Revolution and are still in use today in the European Union. Many countries use local units equal to a hectare but under a different name.

Acre

Acres are used in North America and Burma in place of hectares to measure land. One acre equals about 4046.86 square meters. Historically it was defined as the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in one day.

Barn

Barns are used to measure very small areas such as cross sections of atoms in high energy physics. One barn equals 10⁻²⁸ square meters. It is accepted in SI, although is not an SI unit. It is close in size to the area of the nucleus of uranium, which was jokingly referred to by physicists to be “as big as a barn.” This is where the name for the unit originated. It was established during the Second World War, and this name was convenient because it could easily be used as a code name in phone and other communication between scientists involved in the Manhattan Project.

Calculating Area

The area of simple objects can be calculated through a comparison with a square, the size of which is known. This method is convenient because the area of a square is easy to calculate. Some of the formulas for calculating the area of geometrical shapes are derived using this approach. Another strategy for calculating area, in particularly for polygons, is dividing a polygon into triangles and using the properties and the area calculation formulas for triangles. Calculations for complicated shapes are done using multivariable calculus.

Formulas for Calculating Area

• Square: its side squared.
• Rectangle: product of its sides.
• Triangle (given side and height): one half of the product of its side and height, as measured from that side to the opposite edge. The formula is: A = ½ah, where a is the side and h is the height.
• Triangle (given two sides and the angle between them): one half of the product of its sides, multiplied by the sine of the angle that they form. The formula is: A = ½ab sin(α), where a and b are the sides, and α is the angle between them.
• Equilateral triangle: square root of three, divided by four and multiplied by its side, squared.
• Parallelogram: product of its side and height, as measured from that side to the opposite side.
• Trapezoid: sum of the two parallel opposite sides divided by two and multiplied by the height, as measured between these two sides.
• Circle: product of the radius squared and π.
• Ellipse: product of the semi-axes and π.

Calculating Surface Area

To calculate the surface area of simple structures such as prisms, one can flatten the solid surface onto a plane and use the formulas above. A sphere cannot be flattened in this way; instead its surface area is calculated by finding the product of 4π and the squared radius. If we compare the area of a circle and the surface area of a sphere with same radius, the area of the circle would be four times smaller.

Surface areas of astronomical objects are approximately 6.088 x 10¹² square kilometers for the Sun, and about 5.1 x 10⁸ square kilometers for the Earth, which is roughly 12 times smaller than the Sun. The surface area of the Moon is about 3.793 x 10⁷ square kilometers, which is about 13 times smaller than the Earth.

Planimeter

Areas can also be measured by a device called planimeter. There are several varieties of this instrument, including linear and polar types. They can be analog or digital. Digital planimeters allow you to input scale as well, so you can easily measure areas on a map. Planimeters measure the distance traveled along the perimeter, as well as the direction of travel. The distance that the wheel of the planimeter travels parallel to its axis is not recorded. These instruments are used in a variety of areas including medicine, biology, engineering, and agriculture.

Interesting Facts about Area

Isoperimetric Theorem

The Isoperimetric Theorem states that if areas of shapes with the same perimeter are compared, the area of a circle is the largest. A circle also has the smallest perimeter if all shapes with the same area are compared. A perimeter refers to a line that forms the boundary of a geometric shape.

Largest Spaces by Area

Country: Russia, with 17,098,242 kilometers squared (this includes area covered by both land and water). The second and third largest countries by total area are Canada and China, respectively.

City: The largest city measured by the land area that it occupies is New York Metro. It is 8683 kilometers squared. The second and third largest cities are Tokyo with 6993 square kilometers, and Chicago, measuring 5498 kilometers squared.

City Square: Merdeka Square in Jakarta, Indonesia, measuring about 1 kilometer squared. The second largest is Praça dos Girassóis in Palmas, Brazil, about 0.57 kilometers squared. The third largest is the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. It is about 0.44 kilometers squared.

Lake: There is debate whether Caspian Sea is a lake, but if it is viewed as a lake, it is the biggest one in the world. It has a surface area of 371,000 kilometers squared. The second largest is Lake Superior, one of the five Great Lakes in North America. It is 82,414 kilometers squared. Lake Victoria in Africa is the third largest lake by area, 69,485 kilometers squared.

References

This article was written by Kateryna Yuri

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Area Converter

Area is the amount of space a two-dimensional (flat or uneven) surface takes up. Every unit of length has a corresponding unit of area. Thus, areas can be measured in square meters (m²), square centimeters (cm²), square millimeters (mm²), square kilometers (km²), square feet (ft²), square yards (yd²), square miles (mi²), etc. The SI unit of area is the square meter, which is considered an SI-derived unit.

Using the Area Converter Converter

This online unit converter allows quick and accurate conversion between many units of measure, from one system to another. The Unit Conversion page provides a solution for engineers, translators, and for anyone whose activities require working with quantities measured in different units.

You can use this online converter to convert between several hundred units (including metric, British and American) in 76 categories, or several thousand pairs including acceleration, area, electrical, energy, force, length, light, mass, mass flow, density, specific volume, power, pressure, stress, temperature, time, torque, velocity, viscosity, volume and capacity, volume flow, and more.
Note: Integers (numbers without a decimal period or exponent notation) are considered accurate up to 15 digits and the maximum number of digits after the decimal point is 10.

In this calculator, E notation is used to represent numbers that are too small or too large. E notation is an alternative format of the scientific notation a · 10^x. For example: 1,103,000 = 1.103 · 10⁶ = 1.103E+6. Here E (from exponent) represents “· 10^”, that is “times ten raised to the power of”. E-notation is commonly used in calculators and by scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

• Select the unit to convert from in the left box containing the list of units.
• Select the unit to convert to in the right box containing the list of units.
• Enter the value (for example, “15”) into the left From box.
• The result will appear in the Result box and in the To box.
• Alternatively, you can enter the value into the right To box and read the result of conversion in the From and Result boxes.

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