Square Yards to Barns (yd² to b)

1 square yard equals 8.3612736×10²⁷ barns exactly.

1 square yard = 8.3612736×10²⁷ barns

How to convert square yards to barns

To convert square yards to barns, multiply the number of square yards by 8.3612736×10²⁷. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply barns by 1.195990046×10⁻²⁸ (rounded).

barns = square yards × 8.3612736×10²⁷

Example: 10 square yards = 8.3612736×10²⁸ barns.

About these units

Square Yard (yd²)

US & ImperialCurrent unit

9 square feet (0.8361 m²). Used for carpet, turf and land in the UK and India (where it is called a gaj).

Branches and rods lie behind this unit. The word yard comes from Old English gerd or gyrd, meaning a staff or measuring rod, and it first appears in the late seventh-century laws of Ine of Wessex, where a yard of land was a tax unit. Where its length came from is uncertain: pacing, the cubit and the arm of King Henry I have all been suggested. A square yard is simply a square of that length on each side.

After the 1959 agreement among six countries fixed the yard at exactly 0.9144 meter, the square yard became exactly 9 square feet, 1,296 square inches or about 0.836 m². It is used across the English-speaking world, notably in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India and Pakistan. In northern India it is called a gaj, and in Pakistan a gaz, and house plots there are often quoted in it. In the US and UK the yard, divided into eighths, is also how cloth is bought, so the square yard suits flooring and fabric in the same breath.

1 square yard = 0.83612736 square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Square yard; Wikipedia: Yard; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Barn (b)

ScientificCurrent unit

Exactly 10⁻²⁸ square meters. Used in nuclear and particle physics for reaction cross-sections; the name is a joke about a target 'as big as a barn'.

Nuclear physicists coined this unit during the Second World War. Marshall Holloway and Charles Baker, working at Purdue on Manhattan Project problems, wanted a short name for the cross section of a nucleus and passed over names such as Oppenheimer and Bethe. They settled on a joke about a target that was really as big as a barn, and the word first appeared in print in a secret Los Alamos report of June 1943.

One barn is 10 to the power of minus 28 square meters, or 100 square femtometers, roughly the cross-sectional area of a uranium nucleus. NIST lists the conversion as exact. The barn was never an SI unit, though the BIPM acknowledged it in the eighth SI Brochure because particle physics relies on it. Prefixed forms dominate today: the femtobarn is the usual choice in high-energy physics, and the inverse femtobarn measures integrated luminosity. Informal names exist too, such as outhouse for a microbarn and shed for a yoctobarn.

1 barn = 1×10⁻²⁸ square meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Barn (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8 conversion factors

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