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Orders of magnitude

Posted by Lewis on November 01, 2004

In Reply to: Orders of magnitude posted by Jose Carlos on November 01, 2004

: "Companies with just a toehold in the field of nanotechnology thus eagerly embrace their nano side.
: For example, U.S. Global Aerospace provides
: security devices for passenger and
: military vehicles. After it developed a secure
: cockpit door that used nanofiber technology,
: company executives quickly changed
: the firm's name to U.S. Global Nanospace,
: a shrinkage of 14 orders of magnitude."

: Please, can anyone explain what these 14 orders of magnitude are about? Thanks.

: Jose Carlos

'nano' is 10 to the power of minus nine = 10n-9, whereas global is related to the size of the earth - a scale of some thousand Kilometers. a 'kilo' is a multiplier of 10n4 so between 10n-9 and 10n4 are 14 orders of magnitude.

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