Acre

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Acre

An acre is the name of a unit of area in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. The most commonly used acres today are the international acre and, in the United States, the survey acre.

There are always 4,840 square yards in an acre. Because of alternative definitions of a yard, the exact size of an acre also varies. Related units of length are the acre's length of one furlong (220 yards) and the acre's breadth of one chain (22 yards).

The acre is often used to express areas of land. In the metric system, the hectare is commonly used for the same purpose. An acre is approximately 0.4 hectares.

One acre is slightly less than 91 yards on an American Football field, with the full field, including the end zones, covering approximately 1.32 acres.

International acre

In 1958 the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations defined the length of the international yard to be 0.9144 metres. Consequently, the international acre is defined to be equal to 4,046.8564224 square metres.

United States survey acre

The United States survey acre is defined to be equal to 4,046.87261 square metres. It is based on the United States survey foot, which is very slighly larger than the international foot. It is the standard acre in the United States.

Equivalence to other units of area

1 international acre is equal to the follwing metric units:

4,046.8564224 square metres
0.4047 hectares

1 international acre is equal to the follwing customary units:

160 square rods (1 square rod is 0.00625 acres)
100 Indian cents (1 cent is equal to 0.01 acres)
10 square chains (1 square chain is equal to 0.1 acres)
4 rood (1 rood is 0.25 acres)
0.0015625 square miles (1 square mile is equal to 640 acres)

1 United States survey acre is equal to:

4,046.87261 square metres

Use of the acre

In the United Kingdom the use of acres is now officially discouraged, but it remains a very familiar measure of land with the general public. The acre also remains the legal unit of land measure in the United States.

The usual land tract under the Homestead Act in the United States is 160 acres or 0.25 square miles. This results in common field lengths of 0.5 miles, with every rod in width equal to one acre.

The area of land is usually determined by reference to the area within its boundaries as drawn on a map. On level ground, the area of the terrain will correspond to the area on the map. On sloping ground, the area of the terrain will be greater than the area on the map.

Historical origin

The word "acre" is derived from Old English æcer (originally meaning "open field", cognate to Latin ager, Old Greek agros).

The acre was selected as approximately the amount of land tillable by one man behind an ox in one day. This explains one definition as the area of a rectangle with sides of length one chain and one furlong. A long narrow strip of land is more efficient to plough than a square plot, since the plough does not have to be turned so often. The word "furlong" itself derives from the fact that it is one furrow long.

Statutory values for the acre were enacted in England by acts of:

Edward I,
Edward III,
Henry VIII,
George IV and
Victoria – the British "Weights and Measures Act" of 1878 defined it as containing 4,840 square yards.

Historically the size of farms and landed estates in the United Kingdom was always expressed in acres, even if the number of acres was so large that it might conveniently have been expressed in square miles. For example a certain landowner might have been said to own 32,000 acres of land, not 50 square miles of land.

Other acres

Scottish acre, one of a number of obsolete Scottish units of measurement

External links

Customary units in the United States | Imperial units | Real estate | Units of area

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