how big are atoms compared to viruses compared to bacteria etc?

385 viewsBiologyOther

I was listening to radiolab and they mentioned that bacteria are usually 100s of times bigger than viruses. I’ve never really had a good sense of the relative sizes of microscopic things, but always wanted to.

So if a virus was human sized, would a bacteria be building-sized? Would an atom be the size of a penny? Basically, if you were to map the microscopic world onto the visible world, what would things be?

In: Biology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Here’s some useful images to illustrate relative scales:

[This is an atomic render of a coronavirus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#/media/File%3ACoronavirus._SARS-CoV-2.png). Each of those little fuzzy looking spheres that the virus is made of is an atom.

[This is a comparison between a coronavirus, a bacteria, and some other types of cell](https://abcdust.net/how-large-is-a-corona-virus-virion-compared-to-the-mp10-2-5/)

You are viewing 1 out of 7 answers, click here to view all answers.