Convert Square Mil (mil²) to Barn (b (area)) instantly.
About these units
Square Mil (mil²)
A square mil equals the area of a square one mil (0.001 inch) on each side, producing an area of one-millionth of a square inch. This tiny unit appears in microfabrication, thin-film manufacturing, and fine electronic component design. Engineers rely on mils and mil² for PCB trace design, wire bonding pads, and micro-mechanical parts. Despite modern efforts to shift toward metric units, mils remain deeply embedded in American electronics manufacturing due to legacy tooling and engineering standards.
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.