Did you watch the video? Then you must have noticed that the things you saw became ten times bigger. You started with something very small, only 0.000000010 metres. Wow… so many zeros. You can also say it more simply; it’s 10 picometres.
We also use different names for larger things. For example, is it a million times bigger than a metre? Then we call it megametre. This is useful, for example, for expressing the size of planets.
The table below shows what the different sizes are called.
- Does it say 10-12 ? Then it is actually 0.000000000001 (a 1 with 12 zeros before it, with a decimal point after the first 0).
- Does it say 1012 ? Then it is 1 000000000 (a 1 with 12 zeros behind it).
Using the table below, you can test your teacher, supervisor or (grand)parent! Do they know what you call 10-6, for example?
Size | Unit | Abbreviation |
10-12 | picometre | pm |
10-9 | nanometre | nm |
10-6 | micrometre | µm |
10-3 | millimetre | mm |
10-2 | centimetre | cm |
10-1 | decimetre | dm |
1 | metre | m |
101 | decametre | dam |
102 | hectometre | hm |
103 | kilometre | km |
106 | megametre | Mm |
109 | gigametre | Gm |
1012 | terametre | Tm |
Size of animals
How big do you think this animal is? Take a guess.
This microscopically small animal is a moss piglet. They live among us and do not grow larger than 1.5 millimetres. Yet they are real superheroes! They can survive temperatures of up to ‑270 °C.
To put their superpowers to the test, they were also sent into space. There, they spent 10 days unprotected and then returned — alive! — back to earth.