Answer

How to measure a 1 meter box (Square meters)?

Square meters are a measurement of area, usually used to measure a two-dimensional space such as a field or floor. For example, you might measure the footprint of a couch in square meters, and then measure your living room in square meters to see if it will fit. If you only have a ruler or measuring tape that uses feet or another non-metric unit, you can still use it to calculate the area, then convert to square meters.

1. Choose a meter stick or metric tape measure. Select a meter stick ruler or tape measure with meters (m) or centimeters (cm) printed on it. These tools will make it easier to calculate square meters, since they were designed in the same system of measurement.

If you can only find a ruler with feet (ft) or inches (in), measure with those instead, then go to the section on converting to square meters.

 

2. Measure the length of the area you're measuring. Square meters are a unit for measuring area, or the size of a two-dimensional object such as a floor or a field. Use your measuring tool to measure one side of the object, from one corner to the other. Write down the result.

If the object is longer than 1 meter, remember to include both the meter and centimeter parts of the measurement. For instance, "2 meters 35 centimeters."

 

3. Measure the width. Use the same tool to measure the width of the same area or object. The side you measure in this step should be angled close to 90º away from the length of the object you measured earlier, like two sides of a square next to each other. Write this number down as well.

Unless the object you're measuring is much smaller than 1 meter, you can round to the nearest centimeter when making your measurements. For instance, if the width is slightly past the 1 meter 8 centimeter mark, just use '"1m 8cm" as your measurement, without using decimals or millimeter measurements.

 

4. Convert from centimeters to meters. Usually, the measurements won't divide evenly into meters. Instead, you'll have a measurement in both meters and centimeters, for example "2 meters 35 centimeters." Because 1 centimeter = 0.01 meters, you can convert a centimeter measurement into meters by moving the decimal point two digits to the left. Here are a couple examples:

35cm = 0.35m, so 2m 35cm = 2m + 0.35m = 2.35m

8cm = 0.08m, so 1m 8cm = 1.08m

 

5. Multiply the length and width together. Once both measurements are converted into meters, multiply them together to get the measurement of the area in square meters. Use a calculator if necessary. For example:

2.35m x 1.08m = 2.538 square meters (m²).

 

6. Round to a more convenient measurement. If you get a long decimal as an answer, for instance 2.538 square meters, you'll probably want to round it to a number with fewer digits, for instance 2.54 square meters. In fact, since you probably didn't measure correctly down to the tiniest fraction of a meter, the last digits probably aren't accurate anyway. In most cases, you can round to the nearest centimeter (0.01m). For a more accurate measurement, learn how to round to the significant digits.

 

Whenever you multiply two numbers with the same units (for instance, meters), the answer is always in the form of that unit squared (m², or square meters).