Square foot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The square foot is an imperial unit / U.S. customary unit (non-SI non-metric) of area, used mainly in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. It is defined as the area of a square with sides of 1 foot (0.333... yards, 12 inches, or 0.3048 metres) in length. For comparison, the average one-family house in the United States in 2007 had a total floor area of approximately 2500 square feet.[1]
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[edit] Symbols
There is no universally agreed symbol but the following are used:
- square feet, square foot, square ft
- sq feet, sq foot, sq ft, SF
- feet/-2, foot/-2, ft/-2
- feet^2, foot^2, ft^2
- feet², foot², ft²
A symbol for square foot, square feet, and "per square foot" commonly used in architecture, real estate and interior space plans is a simple square with a vertical line bisecting it. It is also occasionally written as a square with a slash through it.
[edit] Conversions
1 square foot is equivalent to:
- A block 12 inches by 12 inches has a square foot area of 1 square foot. 12 inches is equal to 1 foot.
- 144 square inches
- 1/9 square yards
- 0.01 "squares". (A square is a unit used in roofing to measure the area of a roof and is also a unit used in Australia before metrication (and since) to measure the floor area of a house. 1 "square" = 100 sq ft)
- ≈0.00002295684 acres
- 92 903.04 square millimetres
- 929.0304 square centimetres
- 0.09290304 square metres
- 0.000000092903040 square kilometres
[edit] Historical Use
Before metrication, the square foot was in use throughout Europe, as part of the traditional system of measurement, which showed considerable local variation. Some examples below:
- Bavarian square foot = 0.0864751 m²
- Prussian square foot = 0.098504 m²
- Viennese square foot = 0.099921 m²
- Parisian square foot = 0.105521 m² [2]
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.census.gov/const/C25Ann/sftotalmedavgsqft.pdf
- ^ Das Hauslexikon, vol. VI, Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel 1837, p. 596
[edit] See also
- 1 E-1 m² for a comparison with other areas
- Cubic foot
- Orders of magnitude (area)
- Conversion of units
- Area (geometry)
- Square (algebra), square root
- Miscellaneous Technical (Unicode) for a list of miscellaneous technical symbols and fonts which support the square foot symbol
