Powers of Ten (Scientific American Library Paperback)

Rating:
Summary: Big and small
Review: This reference gives the general reader an excellent sense of the dimensions. The main portion of this reference consists of illustrations which change by an order of magnitude, starting with a view of space directed towards Earth in a square with sides of 1025 meters or approximately 1 billion light years, moving onto the Milky Way Galaxy at 1021 meters or approximately 100,000 light years, to the Solar System at 1014 meters or 100 billion km, to the Earth at 107 meters or 10,000 km, to metropolitan Chicago at 105 meters or 100 km, to a man at a picnic at 100 meters or 1 meter, to cells in the man's hand at 10-4 meters or .1mm or 100 microns, to DNA in a cell at 10-7 meter or .1 micron, to atoms in the DNA at 10-9 meter or 10 angstroms, to the nucleus of a carbon-12 atom in the DNA at 10-14 meters or 10 fermis, to finally an abstract illustration of quark and force particles at 10-16 meter or .1 fermi.