Square foot (ft²)
Definition: A square foot (symbol: ft²) is the area of a square with sides of one foot. It equals exactly 0.09290304 square meters.
History/origin: The square foot evolved with the foot as a natural area unit in the imperial system and became central to building, housing, and property measurement in English-speaking countries.
Current use: Square feet are widely used in the United States and Canada for apartments, houses, offices, flooring, roofing, and construction estimates.
Square kilometer (km²)
Definition: The square kilometer covers a large metric area: one kilometer by one kilometer. Since each side is 1,000 meters, one km² contains 1,000,000 m².
History/origin: Large-scale mapping and public statistics needed a unit bigger than hectares or square meters, so km² became the common metric choice for regions and natural features.
Current use: Km² appears in geography, census tables, environmental reports, park descriptions, city profiles, and comparisons of islands, watersheds, forests, and countries.