Square Meters to Square Chains (m² to sq ch)
1 square meter equals 0.002471053815 square chains (rounded).
How to convert square meters to square chains
To convert square meters to square chains, multiply the number of square meters by 0.002471053815. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply square chains by 404.6856422 (rounded).
square chains = square meters × 0.002471053815
Example: 10 square meters = 0.02471053815 square chains.
About these units
Square Meter (m²)
The SI unit of area: a square one meter on each side. Used for floor areas and property sizes in most of the world.
Squaring the meter was built into the metric system from the start. The French law of 18 Germinal, Year III (7 April 1795) defined the are, the land unit that gave the hectare its name, as exactly 100 square meters, so the square meter was already the foundation of metric land measure. Nobody is credited with inventing it as a separate unit. It is simply the area of a square one meter on each side, and any SI prefix that works for the meter works for it, with the prefix squared along with the unit.
That squaring catches people out: a square kilometer is one million square meters, not one thousand. Since 1983 the meter has been defined through the speed of light, so the square meter is tied to a constant of nature as well as to the second. A hectare, about the area of Trafalgar Square in London, is 10,000 square meters. In everyday terms one square meter is about 10.76 square feet. Unicode has a compatibility character for it, but the recommended way to write it is the plain superscript two: m².
The square meter is the reference unit for area on this site.
Sources: Wikipedia: Square metre; Wikipedia: Are (unit); NIST: the meter and the SI redefinition
Square Chain (sq ch)
484 square yards (404.69 m²), one tenth of an acre. A surveying unit.
Surveyors rather than farmers gave this unit its shape. In 1620 the English clergyman and mathematician Edmund Gunter devised a measuring chain of 100 links that was 66 feet long, and by 1675 it was in wide use. A square chain, 66 feet by 66 feet, covers 4,356 square feet, or 484 square yards. The convenient result is that ten of them make exactly one acre, so a plot measured in chains could be turned into acres by moving a decimal point.
That arithmetic was the reason the US adopted the chain. A report by Thomas Jefferson in 1784 led to the Land Ordinance of 1785, which required the chain for surveying the public lands, and many American property lines still trace back to chain measurements. In metric terms a square chain is about 404.69 square meters. The linear chain remains in niche use, for example in railway milepost distances in Britain, in wildfire spread rates in the United States, and as the length of a cricket pitch.
1 square chain = 404.6856422 square meters (approximately).
Sources: Wikipedia: Chain (unit); Wikipedia: Acre; Wikipedia: Rod (unit)
Related conversions
- Square chains to square meters (reverse)
- Square meters to square kilometers
- Square meters to hectares
- Square meters to square inches
- Square meters to square feet
- Square meters to square yards
- Square meters to acres
- Square meters to square miles
- Square meters to square centimeters
- Square meters to square millimeters
- Square meters to tsubo
- Square meters to pyeong
- Square meters to rai (Thai)
- Square kilometers to square chains
- Hectares to square chains
- Square inches to square chains
- Square feet to square chains
- Square yards to square chains
- Acres to square chains
- Square miles to square chains
See all area units.