Square metre

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.

"m^2" redirects here. For other uses, see m² (disambiguation).
Square metre
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
Square Meter Unit Conversion Visual Aid

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

MultiplicationNameSymbol MultiplicationNameSymbol
100 square metre (centiare) m2 100 square metre (centiare) m2
102square decametre (are)dam2 10−2square decimetredm2
104square hectometre (hectare)hm2 10−4square centimetrecm2
106square kilometrekm2 10−6square millimetremm2
1012square megametreMm2 10−12square micrometreμm2
1018square gigametreGm2 10−18square nanometrenm2
1024square terametreTm2 10−24square picometrepm2
1030square petametrePm2 10−30square femtometrefm2
1036square exametreEm2 10−36square attometream2
1042square zettametreZm2 10−42square zeptometrezm2
1048square yottametreYm2 10−48square yoctometreym2
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 can be used, as in m².

Conversions

One square metre is equal to:

Examples
  • One square meter can stand up to 5 people at the same time.[3]

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.
  3. "Standing Crowd Density | Prof. Dr. G. Keith Still". www.gkstill.com. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
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