Friday, October 30, 2009

Visualizing the Size of an Atom

Frequently, scientific notation and metric prefixes hide the size of the molecules with which we deal. I recently ran across this flash applet that helps to compare the sizes of various small objects - down to the size of a single carbon atom.

How big is a carbon atom?

And, of course, I couldn't leave out the classic video, Powers of 10, which not only shows the size of atoms, but our planet's size in relation to the cosmos.

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