HECTARES

I realised today that I have no idea how big a hectare is. No clue. Size of a park? Could be. A large garden? Bigger than an acre, surely. How big’s an acre? Not a clue. I decided to ask Siri.

“Hey Siri. How big is a…

“Uh huh?”

“Every time…” I tutted. Why does Siri do that?

“Okay I found this on the web for how big is it every time bro. Check it out.”

Man alive. Deep breath. Bro.

“Hey Siri.”

Wait for it.

“Mm hm?”

“How big is a hectare?”

“Hector has an area of 1.8 square miles.”

(Hector, it turns out, is a place in Minnesota. I doubt many people need to know how big it is. If you’re in it, you know already and if you’re not, you’re probably not bothered.)

“Right.” (Determined this time) “Hey Siri…”

…

“Mm hm?”

“How big is a hectARE?”

“One hectare is 2.47 acres.”

“Thank you. Oh. Wait. How big is an acre?”

Nothing from Siri, who of course is playing a weird game of Simon says.

“Hey Siri. How big is an…”

“Uh huh?”

…

“Hey Siri.” (Wearily)

“Mm?”

“How big is an acre?”

“One acre is 0.0016 square miles.”

How does that help me? I don’t have much concept of how big a square mile is either, other than obviously it’s a square with sides of the square-root-of-one mile. The only I can think of is maybe… aha!

“Hey Siri. How big is Hyde Park?”

“Hyde Park, Utah, has an area of 4.33 square miles.”

I don’t know where Siri lives, as in where the server is with all its information, but wherever that place is, had better be further than a hectare away from me.

Turns out that Hyde Park (London) is 143 hectares, which is about 350 acres. Oh, and an acre is not quite two football pitches.

And a hectare is a square with sides 100m long.

I don’t know why Siri couldn’t have just told me that.