Correction (thanks to John Steele for catching this):
The stere is a cubic meter. It is still used in some parts of the world,
though the SI Brochure does not endorse it.
The square meter was once called a centiare, which serves only to
lengthen the table I provided, using the same factor of 100.
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
On 2012-03-13 21:49, James Frysinger wrote:
Paul,
The hectare is alive and well and frequently used in the United States.
Some fields of endeavor that use it are forestry and agriculture. Yields
in terms of kilograms per hectare or cubic meters per hectare are common
in agricultural research articles, for example. Hectares are used in
geography, geology, and the above fields when the square meter would
require too large a numerical value and the square kilometer too small a
numerical value. Likewise, biological population studies sometimes use
the hectare ("217 nesting pairs of Eastern Bluebirds per hectare").
When asked by local folks how large my farm is here in Middle Tennessee,
I tell them "100 hectares". If they ask and press the point I tell them
that's 250 acres. Caving in or educating them about the similarity in
sizes? You be the judge.
The missing part is what makes the relationship between the hectare and
the square kilometer hard to recall. We should also be permitted to use
the are:
100 square meters in an are
100 ares in a hectare (think hecto-...are)
100 hectares in a square kilometer
By the way, an old name for the square meter was the stere (see some of
our 19th century documents in the U.S.).
Jim
