[BugsJustFindMe]

> Huge landfills are ruining the Earth because they are taking up a lot of space...The biggest landfill in the United States...is 2,200 acres wide

Ignoring the minor detail that acres are a measurement of area and not width, the contiguous US is 2 _billion_ acres. 2,200 acres is 0.00011% of that. We can easily spare the space.

> The organic materials in these landfills can decay and release greenhouse gasses...when these items go to landfills, they will take much longer to decompose than normal

This appears to contradict your kid's message, because it conveys that landfills reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.

The page also has zero citations.

[chrisseaton]

An acre isn't purely a measurement of area of undefined shape - it also has a defined width and length.

That said I don't know why anyone would be talking about acres when they could more simply say km wide or of area km squared that most people would not intuitively understand.

[tdeck]

This website is aimed at people in the United States (note the shipping form), for whom an acre is still the most common unit of land measurement. Most people in suburban/rural areas in the U.S. are likely to have a sense of what an acre is, while few would know what a square kilometer looks like.

[chrisseaton]

Don't Americans run 100 m and 5 km and 10 km distances? I would have thought that would give most people an intuitive understanding of what a km is. Even the US military now uses kms.

[pixl97]

The number of Americans that race is relatively small. Our houses and property are sold on the per acre basis so its pretty commonly used.

[johnchristopher]

> That said I don't know why anyone would be talking about acres when they could more simply say km wide or of area km squared that most people would not intuitively understand.

Ohooo, ohoo, ohohoho. Where I live (continental Europe) it's impossible for people to use km or meters for agricultural or housing land. It's alway acres this or hectares thats. It drives me nuts but I have learned to nod and I google the conversion later.

[Kubuxu]

Weird, here we are using Are (100m²) and Hectare (10,000m²). Till now I equated Acre with Are but it turns out they are different things.

[johnchristopher]

> Till now I equated Acre with Are but it turns out they are different things.

Oh well, so did I. Until your post I thought `acre` was the translation of `are`.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> An acre isn't purely a measurement of area of undefined shape - it also has a defined width and length.

This is wrong. Acres are defined as the area encompassed by a particular set of lengths, but acres do not have specified widths and lengths because it is a unit of area, not of width or length. Acres can be any shape. They do not have to be rectangular.

The page appears to talking about the Apex Regional landfill near Las Vegas, Nevada, which has an _area_ of 2200 acres. Though you'd never know it because the page has no citations anywhere.

[chrisseaton]

> This is wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre

> defined as the area of one chain by one furlong

[waterhouse]

> Originally, an acre was understood as a selion of land sized at forty perches (660 ft, or 1 furlong) long and four perches (66 ft) wide [...]. As a unit of measure, an acre has no prescribed shape; any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre.

Looks like both usages have existed.

[BugsJustFindMe]

"The area of" is important there. If you're going by what wikipedia says, perhaps you could keep reading to the part where it also says "As a unit of measure, an acre has no prescribed shape; any area of 43,560 square feet is an acre."

[chrisseaton]

Right but when someone specifically says 'width' for acre then what do you do? Assume they mean the width of a traditional acre, or claim you have no idea what they mean?

[BugsJustFindMe]

Well in this case they're apparently talking about something that has 2200 acres area, not widths-worth.