Square Rods to Square Meters (sq rd to m²)
1 square rod equals 25.29285264 square meters exactly.
How to convert square rods to square meters
To convert square rods to square meters, multiply the number of square rods by 25.29285264. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply square meters by 0.03953686103 (rounded).
square meters = square rods × 25.29285264
Example: 10 square rods = 252.9285264 square meters.
About these units
Square Rod (sq rd)
30.25 square yards (25.29 m²), also called a perch. 160 square rods make an acre.
Perch is the older name for this small square, and it traces back to the Roman pertica, a measuring pole. The word rod became the preferred surveyors' term in England, where land measurers carrying rods, poles or knotted cords were in demand after Henry VIII took over church estates in 1536. A square rod is the square on a rod of 16.5 feet, which works out to 272.25 square feet, or 30.25 square yards.
The odd-looking number makes sense through the acre. Edmund Gunter's 66-foot chain is four rods long, so a square chain holds 16 square rods, and ten square chains make an acre. That means 160 square rods fill an acre, and a rood holds 40. Metric equivalents are about 25.29 square meters, a little under the floor area of a small garage. Rods and perches turned up in deeds, tax records and plot descriptions for centuries, and a few English-speaking regions still quote small building plots in perches.
1 square rod = 25.29285264 square meters (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Rod (unit); Wikipedia: Chain (unit); Wikipedia: Acre
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
Related conversions
- Square meters to square rods (reverse)
- Square rods to square kilometers
- Square rods to hectares
- Square rods to square inches
- Square rods to square feet
- Square rods to square yards
- Square rods to acres
- Square rods to square miles
- Square kilometers to square meters
- Hectares to square meters
- Square inches to square meters
- Square feet to square meters
- Square yards to square meters
- Acres to square meters
- Square miles to square meters
- Square centimeters to square meters
- Square millimeters to square meters
- Tsubo to square meters
- Pyeong to square meters
- Rai (Thai) to square meters
See all area units.