I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I am starting small and am working my way up. On Monday we talked about our friends, protons and neutrons, so now let's move up the ladder one notch in terms of magnitude. Artist’s rendition of the atomic nucleus of a uranium atom. 10-14 MAGNITUDE0.000,000,000,000,01 m 10 Femtometers Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom 15 Femtometers As we take the first tentative steps on our journey of scale, we arrive at some of the very building blocks (even though they look round) of existence. The atomic nucleus is the dense region consisting of positively charged protons and electrically neutral neutrons at the center of the basic unit of matter, the atom. Almost all of an atom’s mass is located in its nucleus, the rest provided by its orbiting cloud of negatively charged electrons. The diameter of the nucleus ranges from 1.75 fm for hydrogen—the diameter of a single proton—to about 15 fm for the heaviest atoms, such as uranium. Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us. Previous posts on this topic include: 10-15 Protons and Neutrons Future blog posts will cover: 10-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip 10-12 Gamma Rays 10-11 Fluorine Ion 10-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays 10-9 Carbon Nanotubes 10-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot 10-7 HIV Virus 10-6 Red Blood Cells 10-5 Sand 10-4 Microelectromechanical Systems 10-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components 10-2 Lego 10-1 Prosthetic Fairing 100 Biome Concept Car 101 Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction 102 Shanghai Tower 103 Bay Bridge 104 Masdar City 105 Palm Islands 106 The Moon 107 Earth 108 Jupiter 109 The Sun 1010 Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds 1011 Distance from Jupiter to the Sun 1012 Distance from Pluto to the Sun 1013 Voyager 2 1014 The Solar System 1015 Cat's Eye Nebula 1016 Pillars of Creation 1017 Great Orion Nebula 1018 M15 Globular Cluster 1019 Sagitarius Dwarf Galaxy 1020 Trangulum Galaxy 1021 The Milky Way 1022 IC 1101 1023 Local Group of Galaxies 1024 The Local Supercluster 1025 3C 273 1026 Outer Limit of the Universe Measurement is alive in the lab. Go to the original post...