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How Big Are Things?
Home     Welcome
small Real
world

big     solar system between galaxy
nano
micro
meter
kilo
Mega
Giga
Tera
Peta
Exa
  nanometer's Room - looking at a sheet of graph paper
  nm = 10-9 m
look at the entire room
 
galaxy21
 20
19
local stars18
 17
16
between15
 14
13
E's orbit12
 11
10
sun9
 8
7
texas6
 5
4
hood3
 2
1
you0
 -1
-2
salt grain-3
 -4
-5
bacteria-6
 -7
-8
atom-9
10-9 m    1 nm
10-8 m    10 nm
10-7 m    100 nm

atom ~1 nm
ribosome ~10 nm
virus ~100 nm

angstroms (A)
0
100
200
300
400
500

cell membrane

... DNA helix (think coffee stirrer)
    amino acid
ribosome

globular protein

narrowest nanotube
a typical carbon single-wall nanotube
... bigger multi-wall nanotubes

picture of a nanotube

buckeyball

Rabies Virus (Bullet-shaped. This illustration is sliced open. Some info.) (original image from CDC Phil, image 970)

approximate smallest virus src

  O2 and N2's mean free path in STP air. src,src(PS),src
  H2O's mean free path in STP water. (order 0.1 nm!)

X-Rays (shortest wavelength is ~0.03 nm) [soft vs hard]
.   .   .   Ultra-Violet wavelengths (up to ~400 nm)
Extreme UltraViolet (EUV)
Deep UltraViolet (DUV) [I'm not sure that DUV doesn't overlap UVC]

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