Square metre

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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 systemSI
Unit ofarea
Symbolm2
Comparison of 1 square metre with some Imperial and metric units of area

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

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Square Meter Unit Conversion Visual Aid

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

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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]

  • 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

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One square metre is equal to:

See also

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Notes

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  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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