Convert Homestead (homestead) to Barn (b (area)) instantly.
About these units
Homestead (homestead)
A homestead is not a strictly fixed area unit but historically referred to land parcels granted under the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, typically 160 acres, or 1/4 of a section. These homesteads were offered to settlers willing to cultivate and improve the land. The 160-acre parcel was chosen to be large enough to sustain a family farm in many regions, though this proved inadequate in drier western areas. While no longer an official area unit, "homestead" is deeply embedded in American cultural memory and historical land-use patterns. In legal and historical contexts, it often implicitly means a quarter-section, preserving its measurement-like nature.
Barn (b (area))
The barn is an area unit used almost exclusively in nuclear and particle physics, equal to 10⁻²⁸ square meters. Despite its incredibly tiny size, the barn emerged from humorous origins: early nuclear physicists joked that certain atomic nuclei were "as big as a barn" compared to the particles trying to hit them. The barn quantifies interaction cross-sections—essentially probabilities of particles colliding or interacting with nuclei. Because fundamental forces operate at extremely small scales, typical cross-section values lie in the microbarn, nanobarn, or picobarn range. The barn is essential for describing reaction rates in particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, and astrophysical processes such as stellar fusion.