A View from the Back of the Envelope top

Speed
m/s
Scale of some things
Landmarks
Length
Time
[ Scale | Landmarks | Other ]

Rough Draft

Notes

Todo:
v's: lunar solar molecular human-growth hair-growth
gold-bar-droop mountain-shortening 
relativistic 1 and 10% thresholds
km/hr
light in media
m/s mph
 []  1     [0.4470 (international)][Vade 10]
  1  2.237
 10  22.37
100  223.7
200 for 224 is 10%
m/s mps
 []  1     [1609.3]
 1   0.00062139
10^3 0.6
speed of sound in STP air 331.4 m/s [Cow p236]
From [Lindeburg fcover]:
earth escape 1.12 × 104
sound [SP/20C] air 344
m/s for m/x
1.7 × 10-2 min 0.6 × 102 s
2.8 × 10-4 hr 3.6 × 103 s
1.2 × 10-5 day 8.64 × 104 s
1.7 × 10-6 wk 6.048 × 105 s
0.38 × 10-6 mo(30.4day) 2.627 × 106 s
3.2 × 10-8 yr 3.156 × 107 s
3.2 × 10-9 10 yr
3.2 × 10-10 100 yr
3.2 × 10-11 1000 yr
3.2 × 10-12 10,000 yr
(Ended up just doing 10^x s /60/60/24/...)
From [Vade p75]:
planetary mean orbital velocity 30km/s E, 50 M, 5 P
From [Brandt scales1]:
2.2 x 10^{5}     m s^{-1}  Rotational velocity of the Sun around the Milky 
                           Way's center
1 x 10^{-9}      m s^{-1}  Sea floor spreading rate
2 x 10^{-8}      m s^{-1}  Grass growth rate
3 x 10^{-6}      m s^{-1}  Typical glacial advance rate
100              m s^{-1}  Typical speed of an electric pulse in the nervous 
                           system
                             For mylinated axon?
480              m s^{-1}  Earth's atmosphere molecular rms velocity
2380             m s^{-1}  Escape velocity from Moon's surface
10000            m s^{-1}  Typical longitudinal seismic wave velocity in the 
                           Earth's mantle

Cytoplasmic streaming velocity in root hairs cells 1-7.0 um/s ref
How fast do bacterial cells move? They average 50 um/sec,

Average growth rate per day
Hairs on the head          0.35mm
Eyebrows                   0.15mm
Mustaches (beards or whiskers) 0.4mm
Armpit hairs                0.3mm
Pubic hairs                 0.2mm
From Some facts about hair[link broken].
  Thus ~2-4 × 10-9 m/s.
Buckyballs are very rugged. They can survive collisions with metals and other materials at speeds in excess of 20,000 miles per hour,

A View from the Back of the Envelope
Comments encouraged. - Mitchell N Charity <mcharity@lcs.mit.edu>