Square metre

"m^2" redirects here. For other uses, see m² (disambiguation).

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

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

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

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

One 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

• Conversion of units § Area
• Orders of magnitude (area)
• SI
• SI prefix

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.

External links

• BIPM (SI maintenance agency) (home page)
• BIPM brochure (SI reference)