Help Please -- No. of Feet Along Perimeter of Property

What shape your property? How are the boundary lines configured?

Almost circular, but not quite. Imagine dropping to the floor a loop of string. The area within the resulting irregular outline on the floor is 5 acres. The string does not cross over itself.

Interesting question. I got a resume from a high school student wanting to work on weekends. He mentioned that one summer he had spent paintind a four rail fence around an 8-acre property. I tried to figure out how many miles that might be. I was surprised to discover that it all depends on the shape of the property.
If your land is roughly circular and contains 5 acres (43,560 sq ft per acre) you can calculate the area of the circle and then the circumference(perimeter).

Intuitively, shouldn't the answer be the same even if it's not "roughly circular," as long as the string doesn't overlap with itself? The five acres is a constant.

(There may very well be a flaw in my logic here.)

I have an English major's notion of the problems of "squaring the circle".

Take a piece of string and a bag of frozen peas.

Arrange the string in a circle. See how many peas the circle will hold.

Arrange the same string in a square. Can you fit the same number of peas in?

The arrangement of the circumference of the area determin the area.

Noddy lives in a room that is 10" x 12" (120 sq feet of space). She wants to paint a line on the wall of the room that goes completely around it. The line would be 10' and then 12' and then 10' and then another 12' for a total of 44' of line painting.
AuThisBeauty (I may have messed up the name) lives in a room that is 8" x 15" (120 square feet, also). But his line will take him 8' and then 15' and then 8' plus another 15' for a total of 46' of painting.
Johnboy lives in a room that is 1' wide by 120' long (don't ask me why, I tend to pace a bit). That also is 120 sq feet. Painting my line would entail going 1' along two walls and 120' along the other two, for a total of 242' (vs Noddy's 44'). Wierd, ain't it.

realjohnboy--

Thanks for the specifics. I'm better at windy theory than solid, reasoned fact.

BTW. I didn't hire the kid who painted the fence around the eight acres. Depending on how the property was configured, though, painting each side of a four rail fence comes up to perhaps painting six miles or so of fence, In July and August, when the heat and humidity can be pretty stiffling, no less. I asked him to come back and apply again in the Fall.

The unit of acre is area. Shape is not specified.

An Acre can be long and skinny where the perimeter is maximized, or circular or square where the perimiter is minimal.

Rap

The Question Was:



The answer is: It depends--but it is a matter of distance, not area.