Sizes of things

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Revision as of 19:18, 1 November 2009 by Nad (talk | contribs) (Atoms)

Cells

  • 1014 (100 trillion) cells in the Human body
  • A typical cell size is 10μm, (0.01mm) some pollen is a bit smaller than that but is made of several cells. The cell membrane (wall) is about 10nm thick for animals cells.
  • The cell nucleus is 11-22μm and is typically about 10% of the total volume, so the cell would have to be about 50-100μm. Typical mammalian cell nucleaus has 3000-4000 pores of 100nm diameter.
  • Animal cells are on the borderline of visibility, they can be seen but only as a spec of dust.
Endomembrane system diagram.png E-coli.jpg
E-coli single-cell organisms

Human cell with nucleus, about 30,000 atoms in diameter, the pores are about 200 atoms diameter, the ribosomes about twice that

Atoms

  • The Angstrom is 0.1nm and is roughly the size of a typical atom (0.5A for Hydrogen to 3.8A for Uranium).
  • The distance between carbon atoms in β sheets in enzymes etc is roughly 5A (0.5nm).
  • This would make the cell nucleus in the region of 30,000 atoms diameter, and the animal cell 150,000 atoms.
  • The pores on the nucleus would have about 600 atoms around their opening.

See also