Revision as of 10:31, 4 May 2014

How big is an atom?

Atoms are small but not ridiculously small. If a hair (0.1mm) would be the width of a soccer field (~60m) an atom would be roughly the size of a hair. Carbon is about 0.2nm or 2Å in size that makes roughly five atoms per nanometer. When hierarchically building up building structures one can quickly fill up this size gap.

Just for comparison: Relative distances in the other (astronomic) direction are vastly greater. If the planetary orbit of our outermost planet Neptune (which can technically be reached in years) where the size of a hair the nearest stars would lie beyond ~1km and the milkiway would be ~1000km thick at our location. The next galaxies would start at the diameter of our sun ~1000000km then still follows the unimaginable size of intergalactic voids, the observable universe and the universe extrapolated to our "now" of which we now little by now.

Scaling laws

They describe what changes when one goes down the scale. E.g. that magnetic motors become weak but electrostatic ones strong. More details can be found at the scaling laws main page.