A View from the Back of the Envelope top

Micrometers in your hands
10-6 meters per mm (Magnification of ×103)
Scaling the universe to your desktop
How Big Are Things?
Length Area Volume Speed
10 [ -6 | -3 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 ]
If sugar-grains were tables... 10-3 meters per meter

1 um
10 um
100 um
1000 um
10-6 m
0.3 um
316 nm		 3 um
3162 nm
10-5 m
32 um
10-4 m
316 um
0.3 mm
10-3 m
3162 um
3 mm
Bacteria Blood Cell Your hair
~80 um diameter

Honeybee's knee's diameter
~200 um

paper thickness
~150 um

parasitic mite

Sugar grain

Hypodermic needle diameter

1 um per mm
Actual size (though rough, as screen resolution varies). 		human hair plant stomata
1/2 lt·ps (ticks every 1/10 light-picosecond (lt·10-12s))
0 1/10 2/10 3/10 1/2 lt·ps

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

Doables:
  Images too big.  Shrink size & colors, interlace.
  Remove stomata?
  Where did bee's knee's measurement/image come from?
  A hair louse might be nice.

Notes:
  Human hair original image[link broken] from Los Alamos MST[link broken].
  Stomata original image[link broken] from IKE's General Electron Micrography images[link broken].
  Paper thickness: 80 um - lightweight to 330 um - index card.  A table[link broken] with caliper in inches.



History:
  2003-Feb-03   Repaired links - 5 flagged.
  2001.Apr.20   Added link to `How Big Are Things?'.
  1998.Aug.11   Fixed broken hair url.
  1998.Jun.17   Corrected error with magnitude boundaries (3.333->3.162).
  1997.Sep.15   Added paper thickness.
  1997.Sep.12   Added hair, stomata.