An acre is a unit of area that is commonly used to describe the size of a specific plot of land. When looking to purchase land, it is described as being X amount of acres rather than in square footage. Dating back to the times of Old English, the word acre was meant to describe the amount of land a single man with a single ox could till in one day. However, when discussing measurements, the actual size of an acre varied from country to country until the release of the metric system and the U.S. customary system.
How Big is an Acre?
When talking in yards and feet, an acre is comprised of 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet. The problem with this is that there are different variations on what size a yard is. Therefore, the size of an acre is always 4,840 square yards, but that size in actual amount can differ. When the United States released the international yard length at 0.9144 meters, it made it so that the acre became a standard.
In the metric system, an acre is replaced by a hectare. This is used the same way as an acre–to describe the amount of land available. However, an acre is only equal to about 40% of a hectare.
Another way to look at an acre is that it makes up about 90% of an American football field. The actual size of a field is 1.32 acres or 44,000 square feet which is 440 more feet than what an acre is described as.
One final way to look at an acre is that it is 66 feet x 660 feet which comes out to the 43,560 square feet. However, this becomes a problem because an acre doesn’t have to be a perfect 66×660 foot plot of land. However, should the land be a perfect block, this would be what it looks like.
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