An acre is a fairly common unit of measurement. Nevertheless, many people--especially those from urban areas--are unfamiliar with the size of an acre and may have difficulty visualizing the size of, for example, a 37.5-acre lot. If this describes you, and you want to get a sense of the size of a piece of land measured in acres, you may find it helpful to convert the acres into square feet.
Determine the number of acres you wish to calculate into square feet. Let’s use our example number of 37.5 acres.
Multiply the number of acres you wish to calculate into square feet by 43,560—the number of square feet in an acre. In our example, we would multiply 37.5 times 43,560 for a result of 1,633,500.
Divide the total number of square feet by 1.000002 if you want to be extremely precise. The foot used to measure land, called the U.S. survey foot, is very slightly different than the day-to-day foot most people use, known as the international foot. In our example, we would multiply 1,633,500 by 1.000002 for a result of 1,633,496.73.
This number can still seem overwhelming and meaningless, especially if you calculate a large number of acres. To further clarify the number, multiply the number of feet in the acres by 0.0000000358700643 to convert the square feet to square miles. In our example, we would multiply 1, 633,496.73 times 0.0000000358700643 for a final result of 0.05859 square miles.
