Comments on: How big is a hectare?

By: Gil Ben-Ari

Gil Ben-Ari — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:46:44 +0000

I think that JC has answered his own question!

1 Acre is 4840Sq Yds what sort of measurement is that? neither here nor there,

1 Chain??? what type of chain an Anchor chain, bicycle chain, 22yds, why not 20yds or 25 yds. and so forth.

I lived in the middle east for 36 years, from the age of 23 (born and raised in the UK) but the Metric System simplified life immensely.

By: Biddy

Biddy — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:31:43 +0000

Why all the silly chatter about sports fields? Is it a man thing? 100m x 100m is all I needed to know.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:27:43 +0000

Wow. I grew up in Britain and the math I did was largely the 240 pennies to the pound kind. What nutter came up with that? Metric is far simpler and makes more sense … I can’t believe the number of people who are delighted to learn that a litre of water weighs a kilo, 500mL weights 500g, 125mL weighs 125g, etc.

By: Colin Nicholson

Colin Nicholson — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:25:52 +0000

Who needs to visualise an area of land anyway? If you are a farmer or surveyor you will soon learn to do it, anyone else can look it up on Google and measure it, or use a GPS and pace round it.

We are buying a house in Portugal, and had to convert the stated area in square metres into acres in order to be able to compare its value with that of land in the UK, which everyone I know values by the acre. We were surprised to discover from our Brazilian friends that they use acres as well, and on investigation so do many other countries, including Portugal. Seems the British established the units as they surveyed the World and it stuck.

Why we are in such a mad rush to convert to metric units that are impossible to visualise when we had units of measurement that related to quantities we are familiar with in bodily scale I don’t know – I know exactly how big a 6ftx4ft window is, but in millimetres? Give me a break! And when it comes to pressure, forget it. The other huge benefit of non-metric units is that it teaches people to calculate in different bases than 10, so their maths becomes much better. It is only engineers that like everything to be so neat and tidy, to suit their obsessive temperement.

[Mr Nicholson illustrates very well the refusal of some people to learn anything new or different or to adapt to the modern world. "Mad rush"? after 43 years?! - Ed]

By: John Rainsbury

John Rainsbury — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:36:27 +0000

As a member of a Borough Planning Committee, all applications are measured in hectares, prior to being elected a hectare was an alien concept to me however, as a Rugby fan I can easily picture the area and mentally apply this to the applications. This was of real assistance.

As for Trafalger Square, I did know this, but not having been to London, (I do not often venture abroad) I could not picture the area. Living in Rural North West an acre is well known.

By: Tim D

Tim D — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:14:32 +0000

I think the real problem affecting take-up of the (new-fangled) hectare is that most people really have a problem estimating 100m in length.

In my experience the guess tends to fall far short of 100m, in the 50-80m range, so their estimate of a hectare would therefore be about 1/3 to 2/3 the area of the real thing.

The rugby pitch size estimate (above) helps me – but they tend to look much smaller on TV than in reality

By: Robin Paice

Robin Paice — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:01:48 +0000

Jon Child really answers his own question. The actual dimensions of an acre are obscure and little known by the general public, and manipulating the data requires prodigious calculations (JC could have added that there are 640 acres in a square mile). Most people just know that an acre is a big piece of land, and that 6 acres are more than 5 acres. As a unit of measurement it is hopeless.

By contrast, as described in previous comments, 100 m X 100 m = 10 000 square metres (m2) = a hectare (ha), and 100 ha = a square kilometre (km2). Dead easy.

The size of a football pitch has not changed significantly for over a hundred years. For a first class match it is approximately 100 m x 70 m, or 7000 m2, whereas an acre is about 4000 m2.

By: Jon Child

Jon Child — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:41:02 +0000

What is the problem with an acre?
1 acre = 4840 sq yds = 1 chain (22yds or the length of a cricket pitch) * 1 furlong (220yds or 1/8th of a mile).
A football pitch used to be about 1 acre in size, but that seems to have changed with metrication.

By: Han Maenen

Han Maenen — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 10:54:38 +0000

In many states of the USA a unit called ‘commercial acre’ may be used legally to sell land. It measures exactly 36 000 sq.ft compared to the statute acre of 43 560 sq.ft. It was invented by real estate agents and is supposed to be the portion of an acre after deduction of infrastructure. Legal con trick is a better expression. If you buy ‘100 acres’ of land in one of these states, you may be in for a nasty surprise, 9.
In the Middle Ages most fields in Britain and in mainland Europe were long and narrow and the acre was also based on it: four rods by one furlong. The word acre, not the unit, has survived in the German and Dutch speaking parts of Europe: an ‘akker’ is a field for growing crops. A farmer may have, for instance, 100 ha ‘akkerland’. And, by the way, Trafalgar Square in London measures 1 hectare.

By: Daniel Jackson

Daniel Jackson — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:02:09 +0000

Actually the hectare is equal to one square hectometre (hm^2). Since the unit are and none of the other prefixes are commonly used with the are (other then hecto), then I think the are as a unit along with any multiple/sub-multiple of it should be deprecated.

If one is expressing an area, it is best to just express it as A m x B m. This gives a better visualization of the lay of the land. One of the handy uses of square units is when pricing (currency unit per area). In that case, then the unit should be square metres or any prefix attached to square metres to put the numbers in the appropriate range.

The are and its prefixes, like the litre are not a part of SI and should not be promoted.