• Question: Are atoms all MICROSCOPIC or are some larger than a pin head.

    Asked by twsscopezz to Antonia, Douglas, Hugh, Matt, Tom on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Antonia Hamilton

      Antonia Hamilton answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      they are all very microscopic.

    • Photo: Matthew Hurley

      Matthew Hurley answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      All smaller than microscopic – can’t see them with normal microscopes.

    • Photo: Douglas Blane

      Douglas Blane answered on 18 Jun 2010:

      No they’re all much smaller than a pin head.

      There’s a cool graphic that shows you the size of a lot of small things compared to each other here: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/#

      Just grab the slider and pull it to the right.

      Atoms of different materials aren’t much different in size. Even when you go from the lightest – hydrogen – to the heaviest, uranium.

      Most are about the same size as that carbon atom in the graphic. The biggest atom belongs to a metal called caesium. But it’s only about 4 times as big as the carbon atom.

      It depends on the size of the pin, of course, but there are around 5 million million atoms in the head of a pin.

    • Photo: Tom Hardy

      Tom Hardy answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      All atoms are very very small, most you would not even see under a conventional light microscope! No single atom is larger than a pin head because the pin itself is made up of many million atoms.

Comments