Table of Contents

• Prequiz
• 1: Tall (and small) tales
• 2: Metric conversions: step to the right, step to the left
• 3: 3 Worlds: Milli, Micro, Nano
• 4: Focus on the microworld
• 5: Small stuff in the microworld
• 6: Next stop... the nanoworld
• 7: End of the line... the picoworld
• 8: What to memorize

Small stuff in the microworld

The microworld, as we defined it, goes from 1 to 1000 microns. We know that paper is about 100 microns. What about stuff smaller than that?

Below is a scale drawing. Your job is to eyeball the sizes of the different things in this world using the drag-and-drop microscope viewing area. Fill in the table, then click check to see how close you were.

So once again, the microworld is basically the world of cell-sized things, from giants like multicelled animals (dustmites), to big singlecelled organisms (like protists, euglena and paramecium), down to plant and animal cells ( generally in the 5 to 30 um range). Some of the largest structures inside cells, like the nucleus, mitochondria, and chloroplasts, are just at the bottom of the microworld.