Order of magnitude

One way of organizing things in the physical world is by their size. The pages below contain lists of items that are of the same order of magnitude in length, area, volume, or mass. This is useful for getting an intuitive sense of the comparative size of things and the overall scale of the universe.

Length		Area	Volume	Mass
	Example
10-35 m	Planck length
...
10-19 m
10-18 m
10-17 m
10-16 m
10-15 m
10-14 m
10-13 m	Compton wavelength of electron
10-12 m
10-11 m	Hydrogen atom
10-10 m	Heavier atoms	10-20 m2 10-19 m2
10-9 m	Diameter of DNA helix	10-18 m2 10-17 m2
10-8 m		10-16 m2 10-15 m2	10-21 kg 10-20 kg 10-19 kg
10-7 m	Virus	10-14 m2 10-13 m2	10-21 m3 10-20 m3 10-19 m3	10-18 kg 10-17 kg 10-16 kg
10-6 m	bacterium	10-12 m2 10-11 m2	10-18 m3 10-17 m3 10-16 m3	10-15 kg 10-14 kg 10-13 kg
10-5 m	red blood cell	10-10 m2 10-9 m2	10-15 m3 10-14 m3 10-13 m3	10-12 kg 10-11 kg 10-10 kg
10-4 m		10-8 m2 10-7 m2	10-12 m3 10-11 m3 10-10 m3	10-9 kg 10-8 kg 10-7 kg
10-3 m		10-6 m2 10-5 m2	10-9 m3 10-8 m3 10-7 m3	10-6 kg 10-5 kg 10-4 kg
1 cm		1 cm2 10 cm2	1 cm3 10 cm3 100 cm3	1 g 10 g 100 g
100 cm		0.01 m2 0.1 m2	10-3 m3 0.01 m3 0.1 m3	1 kg 10 kg 100 kg
1 m		1 m2 10 m2	1 m3 10 m3 100 m3	1,000 kg 10,000 kg 105 kg
10 m		100 m2 1,000 m2	1,000 m3 10,000 m3 105 m3	106 kg 107 kg 108 kg
100 m		10,000 m2 105 m2	106 m3 107 m3 108 m3	109 kg 1010 kg 1011 kg
1,000 m		106 m2 107 m2	109 m3 1010 m3 1011 m3	1012 kg 1013 kg 1014 kg
10,000 m		108 m2 109 m2	1012 m3 1013 m3 1014 m3	1015 kg 1016 kg 1017 kg
105 m		1010 m2 1011 m2	1015 m3 1016 m3 1017 m3	1018 kg 1019 kg 1020 kg
106 m		1012 m2 1013 m2	1018 m3 1019 m3 1020 m3
107 m	Earth	1014 m2 1015 m2
108 m	Jupiter Moon's orbit	1016 m2 1017 m2
109 m	Sun	1018 m2 1019 m2
1010 m	Rigel, a blue supergiant star	1020 m2 1021 m2
1011 m	Earth's orbit (1 AU)
1012 m	Solar system Betelgeuse, a red supergiant
1013 m
1014 m	Distance to Heliopause
1015 m	1 Lightyear
1016 m	Distance to Alpha Centauri, 1 parsec
1017 m	Crab nebula
1018 m	globular cluster
1019 m
1020 m	Milky Way Galaxy
...
1026m	Observable Universe

(In the above table the different quantities are lined up so that the following are in the same row: area of a square and the length of one side, volume of a cubes and the area of one face, mass of some water and its volume.)

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