Orders of magnitude (length)

This is a list of orders of magnitude for length. Other lists for time, area, volume, mass and dimensionless numbers are also available, and an overview is at order of magnitude.

10^-35 m
- 1.6×10^-35 is approximately one Planck length; lengths smaller than this do not make any physical sense
[...]
10^-18 m = 1 attometre (am)
- size of a quark
10^-15 m = 1 femtometre (fm)
- size of a proton
10^-14 m
- scale of the atomic nucleus
10^-13 m
10^-12 m = 1 picometre (pm)
- wavelength of gamma rays
10^-11 m
10^-10 m = 1 Ångström
- size of smallest atoms
- wavelength of X rays
10^-9 m = 1 nanometre (nm)
- diameter of DNA helix
10^-8 m = 10 nm
- 20 nm -- thickness of bacterial flagellum
- 90 nm -- Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
10^-7 m = 100 nm
- size of chromosomes
- 100 nm -- maximum particle size that can fit through a surgical mask
- wavelengths of visible light
10^-6 m = 1 micrometre aka micron (μm)
- diameter of typical bacterium
- diameter of typical cell nucleus
- 6 μm -- anthrax spore
- 7 μm -- strand of spider web
10^-5 m = 10 μm
- 10 μm -- width of cotton fibre
- 80 μm -- width of human hair
10^-4 m = 100 μm
- 125 μm -- dust mite
10^-3 m = 1 millimetre (mm)
- 2.54 mm -- distance between pins in old DIP (dual-inline-pins) electronic components
10^-2 m = 1 centimetre (cm)
- 1.5 cm -- length of a large mosquito.
- 2.54 cm -- 1 inch
10^-1 m = 10 cm
- 30 cm -- 1 foot
- 91 cm -- 1 yard
1 m
- 1.7 m -- average person's height
- 5.5 m -- height of tallest animal, the giraffe
10 m
- 20 m -- length of a cricket pitch
- 52 m -- height of Niagara Falls
100 m
- 147 m -- original height of the Great Pyramid of Giza
- 300 m -- height of the Eiffel tower
- 448 m -- height of the Empire State building
- 647 m -- height of the Warszawa Radio Mast, tallest man-made structure, collapsed in 1991
1 000 m = 1 kilometre (km)
- 1609 m = 1 international mile
- 1805 m = 1 nautical mile
- 8850 m -- height of the highest mountain, Mount Everest
10 000 m = 10 km
- 11,518 m -- Mindanao deep
- 35 km -- width of the English Channel
100 000 m = 100 km
10⁶ m = 1 000 km
- 3 480 km -- diameter of the Moon
- 6 400 km -- length of the Great Wall of China
10⁷ m = 10 000 km
- 12 756 km = diameter of the Earth
- 40 000 km = circumference of the Earth
10⁸ m = 100 000 km
- 384 000 km -- Moon's orbital distance from Earth
10⁹ m = 1 million km
- 1 390 000 km -- diameter of the Sun
10¹⁰ m = 10 million km
10¹¹ m = 100 million km
- 150 million km -- 1 astronomical unit (AU); mean distance between Earth and Sun.
10¹² m = 1 billion km
- 1.4 billion km -- orbital distance of Saturn from Sun
- 6 billion km -- orbital distance of Pluto from Sun
10¹³ m = 10 billion km
10¹⁴ m = 100 billion km
10¹⁵ m = 1 trillion km
- 9.5 trillion km = 1 light year -- distance travelled by light in one year
10¹⁶ m
- 3.26 light years -- 1 parsec
- 4.2 light years -- distance to nearest star (Proxima Centauri)
10¹⁷ m
10¹⁸ m
10¹⁹ m
10²⁰ m
- 100 000 light years -- diameter of galactic disk of Milky Way Galaxy
10²¹ m
- 2.3 million light years -- distance to Andromeda Galaxy
10²² m
10²³ m
10²⁴ m
- distance to Virgo Cluster of galaxies
10²⁵ m
10²⁶ m
- 10 billion light years -- estimated distance to quasars - the farthest observed objects in the Universe
- 13.7 billion light years -- distance the cosmic background radiation has traveled since the Big bang

See also: SI, SI prefixes, SI base units, units, length, orders of magnitude