Square metre

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Square metre
Metre carre.png
Visualization of a square metre
General information
Unit system SI
Unit of area
Symbolm2
Comparison of 1 square metre with some Imperial and metric units of area Comparison land area units.svg
Comparison of 1 square metre with some Imperial and metric units of area

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.

Contents

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

Square Meter Unit Conversion Visual Aid Square Meter Unit Conversion Visual Aid.svg
Square Meter Unit Conversion Visual Aid

The square metre may be used with all SI prefixes used with the metre.

MultiplicationNameSymbolMultiplicationNameSymbol
100square metre (centiare)m2100square metre (centiare)m2
102square decametre (are)dam210−2square decimetredm2
104square hectometre (hectare)hm210−4square centimetrecm2
106 square kilometre km210−6square millimetremm2
1012square megametreMm210−12square micrometreμm2
1018square gigametreGm210−18square nanometrenm2
1024square terametreTm210−24square picometrepm2
1030square petametrePm210−30square femtometrefm2
1036square exametreEm210−36square attometream2
1042square zettametreZm210−42square zeptometrezm2
1048square yottametreYm210−48square yoctometreym2
1054square ronnametreRm210−54square rontometrerm2
1060square quettametreQm210−60square quectometreqm2

Unicode characters

Unicode 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]

Instead, the Unicode superscript U+00B2² can be used, as in m2.

Conversions

One square metre is equal to:

See also

Notes

  1. David R. Lide, ed. (2010), "INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS", CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (90th ed.)
  2. Unicode Consortium (2019). "The Unicode Standard 12.0 – CJK Compatibility ❰ Range: 3300—33FF ❱" (PDF). Unicode.org. Retrieved May 24, 2019.

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