Angstrom and other metric measurements

Post Reply New Topic

Can someone explain this to me? I get confused with metric "stuff."

The radius of an atom of Krypton is about 1.9 Angstrom. Express the distance in nanometers (nm) and picometers (pm).
How many Krypton atoms would have to be lined up to span 1.0 millimeters?

If the atom of Krypton is assumed to be a sphere, what is the volume in centimeters cubed of a single Krypton atom?


My sincere "thanks" to all...

multiply the nanometer by 10 to get Angstroms, I think?

Angstrom is a measure of the wavelength of light 600 is about infrared

Metric (actually 'SI') measures are about as non-confusing as measures can get - to go from one scale to another involves nothing more than moving the decimal point and most of the various scales directly interrelate (ie, a cube ten millimeters on a side has a volume of one milliliter and the normal mass of one mL of water is one gram).

Anyways, the Angstrom is *NOT* an official 'SI' unit, but it is generally accepted to be 0.1 nanometers (1 x 10^-10 meters). THUS, 10^7 (ten million) angstroms = one mm (1 x 10^-3 meters). Divide 10,000,000 by 1.9 to get the number of krypton atoms to span one mm (about 5,260,000). Also, it would be 0.19 nm and 190 pm.

Pretty simple, isn't it?



Mike

Yes, it is very simple, Mike. Thanks for the great explanation!