A micron, or micrometre, is one millionth of a metre, 10^-6 m. A typical human hair is about 80 microns thick (the range is rather large, from 18 to 180 microns). A human red blood cell is 6 to 8 microns across; the average bacterium is between 1 and 10 microns. The wavelength of visible light is around half a micron - ranging from 0.38 microns for violet to 0.74 microns for red. The smallest features of today's computer chips are just 0.09 microns wide.

An Ångström is much smaller, one ten-thousandth of a micron, one ten-billionth of a metre, 10^-10 m. Atoms are around one Ångström wide - half an Ångström for hydrogen, the smallest of all atoms. X-rays have a wavelength of around an Ångström. The double-helix of DNA is about 20 Ångströms across.

The Fermi is far smaller still, one one-hundred-thousandth of an Ångström, one quadrillionth of a metre, 10^-15 m. A proton or neutron is about one Fermi in diameter.

The Planck Length is really ridiculously small: about a tenth of a billionth of a quadrillionth of a Fermi, 1.6 x 10^-35 m. According to current theoretical physics, that's as small as you can go: any distance smaller than a Planck Length doesn't actually exist.

62 orders of magnitude in length
83 orders of mangitude in mass

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:32 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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