• Question: what is the smallest unit of meausre in the world that we know of?

    Asked by amcdonnell to Adam, Chris, Eleanor, Jessamyn, Sinead on 11 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Christian Wirtz

      Christian Wirtz answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hey,

      that is a kind of tricky question. In science and math, you can always make numbers smaller. All you have to do is put another zero before it. The question is whether or not that number is any use at all or just becomes an inconvenience. I believe the smallest unit of distance anyone uses is the so-called Planck length which is equal to 1.61 x 10^-35 metres (that is, there are 35 zeroes and then there comes the 1). It has no practical significance that I am aware of but the theoreticians tell us there is something special about that distance as it comes from combining various fundamental constants which are the speed of light, Planck’s constant and the gravitational constant.

      I cannot think of any smaller unit, maybe the others know something there?

    • Photo: Adam Murphy

      Adam Murphy answered on 11 Nov 2013:

      Hey,

      In science we use prefixes to make things easier, we say nanometre to shorten billionth of a metre and Megavolt to shorten “1 million volts” The smallest of these prefixes we use today is yocto- . one yoctometre is 0.000000000000000000000001 metres, or one millionth billionth of a nanometre. You don’t see that too often in science.

      There’s also something called the Planck length. Named for a guy called Max Planck. (heehee, funny name). this is 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 m. He got it using the speed of light and a few other constants as main units to measure by. It doesn’t really have any importance in science yet though

      Hope that helps! (I hope I got all those zeroes right!)

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