1 Answer

Its always smart to get a feeling for the size of the thing you are working with.

What I do is figure out the dimensions in feet of a square that has 135 square feet. If you have a square that is 11.6 feet on each side, then you will have 135 square feet.

Since 11.6 feet is 3.9 yards, then the square you are measuring is 3.9 yards on each side. In square yards you will get 3.9 times 3.9 = 15.2 square yards. The area we are talking about is the size of the court for a playground "four square" game.

The cool thing now is that you have a feel for the answer, and you can check your work. Everyone says there are 9 square feet per square yard so 135 divided by 9 ought to be close to 15.2, allowing for rounding errors.

You can do the same thing when you have to convert from metric units to feet and inches. When doing these kinds of conversions it is good to get feeling for the numbers, and to have a good way to cross check your work. If you design a life saving buoy with a 100 centimeter rope on it, somebody might get hurt.