How many acres are in .17 square miles? and How many acres are in .6 square miles?

submitted by Richard
Middle School Teacher in Lumberton ,Tx.

The two areas I am requesting information about are Vatican City and San Marino, the two smallest countries in the world. If I can transfer the sq. miles into acres , I can relate the size of these countries to our school grounds and the students will better understand their sizes.

That's a nice idea, relating the size to the size of something that your students are familar with.

There are 640 acre in a square mile so

Vatican City: 640 0.17 = 108.8 acres

San Marino: 640 0.6 = 384 acres

I expect that both of these are much larger than your school grounds. Here is an alternate suggestion. Find a map of Lumberton ,Tx. I found one at Switchboard.com. If you look at that map, at the lower left is a scale. It shows a lenght that is 0.4 miles. (On my screen it is about one inch long.) If you cut out a square of paper with sides that measure that length then the area of the square will be 0.4  0.4 = 0.16 square miles which is approximately the area of Vatican City. You can then place the square on the map to see how large that area is.