Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Can a tiny bug see an atom?

Let me put it this way:

The smallest insect ever observed is the fairyfly. It has an average body length of just 0.139 millimeters (0.0055 inches). This is almost as thin as some strands of hair.

The fairyfly's body would consist of a bare minimum of 1,690,000,000,000 atoms. Fairyflies being able to see atoms would be on the same scale as us being able to look at tobacco smoke and see every individual molecule.

In fact, no organism that uses visible light to see could ever see an atom, because atoms are thousands of times smaller than the smallest wavelengths of visible light. You simply can't see them, no matter how close you look.



Read other answers by Tyler Schroeder on Quora: Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/2k1lIoo

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