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Imagine trying to cover your entire bedroom floor using tiny postage stamps.
It would take thousands of stamps and hours of work, when a few large carpet tiles would do the job in minutes!

What Is a Square Unit?

Area is the amount of flat space inside a shape, and we measure it by counting identical flat squares that fit inside without any gaps.
A square unit is simply a square where every side measures exactly 1 unit of length.
The little raised 2 in cm2\text{cm}^2 stands for "square" because the shape has 2 dimensions: length and width.
What happens when we want to measure objects of totally different sizes, from a tiny coin to a giant playground?

Meet the Metric Square Units

In the metric system, we use three main square units: square centimeters (cm2\text{cm}^2), square decimeters (dm2\text{dm}^2), and square meters (m2\text{m}^2).
A square decimeter is equal to a 10 cm by 10 cm square, which makes it perfect for things like a book cover or a mousepad.
For big spaces like a classroom floor or a garden patch, we use the much larger square meter.