Tiny Numbers in Science
Even smaller numbers are often found in science, which are so small that they are not easily dealt with using fractions. Scientific notation was created to handle very small and very large numbers.
Examples of small numbers describing everyday real-world objects are:
- size of a bit on a computer hard disk
- feature size of a structure on a microprocessor chip
- wavelength of green light: 5.5 × 10-7 m
- period of a 100 MHz FM radio wave: 1 × 10-8 s
- time taken by light to travel one meter: roughly 3 × 10-9 s
- radius of a hydrogen atom: 2.5 × 10-11 m
- the charge on an electron: roughly 1.6 × 10-19 C (negative)
Other small numbers are found in particle physics and quantum physics:
- size of the atomic nucleus of a lead atom: 7.1 × 10-15 m
- the Planck length: 1.6 × 10-35 m
Read more about this topic: Small Number
Famous quotes containing the words tiny, numbers and/or science:
“It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, ‘Momma, do we believe in winter?’”
—Philip Roth (20th century)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)
“Science is intimately integrated with the whole social structure and cultural tradition. They mutually support one other—only in certain types of society can science flourish, and conversely without a continuous and healthy development and application of science such a society cannot function properly.”
—Talcott Parsons (1902–1979)