View the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth. Then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. After that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.
Once the applet has completely downloaded, a set of the arrows will appear that allow the user to increase or decrease the view magnitude in Manual mode. Click on the Auto button to return to the Automatic mode.
Notice how each picture is actually an image of something that is 10 times bigger or smaller than the one preceding or following it. The number that appears on the lower right just below each image is the size of the object in the picture. On the lower left is the same number written in powers of ten, or exponential notation. Exponential notation is a convenient way for scientists to write very large or very small numbers. For example, compare the size of the Earth to the size of a plant cell, which is a trillion times smaller:
Earth = 12.76 x 10+6 = 12,760,000 meters wide
(12.76 million meters)
Plant Cell = 12.76 x 10-6 = 0.00001276 meters wide
(12.76 millionths of a meter)
Welcome to the Molecular Expressions
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/index.html
