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Scale of things
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| Just how small or big are things exactly? |
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Nowadays we hear more and more often of micrometres, nanometres or even picometres. These measurements certainly represent the world of the small, but how small exactly? And just how big is a megametre, a gigametre or a terametre? |
Did you know for instance that a micrometre is a millionth of a metre or the size of a bacterium? Or that a megametre is one million metres or the approximate distance from Amsterdam to Bordeaux? To help better convey the scale of things, Cefic is now providing a new tool showing what all these different measurements concretely represent.
With time, scientists are able to detect smaller and smaller amounts of any substance in water, air or soil. These very low concentrations are referred to as parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb), parts per trillion (ppt) or parts per quadrillion (ppq). Again, it may be very difficult to grasp what these measurements represent exactly. View our table and you will be surprised to see how these notations can suddenly take on a new dimension.
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