How Big is Big and How Small is Small The Sizes of Everything and Why

333 Pages·2014·4.49 MB·English

by  Timothy Paul Smith

2
HOW BIG IS BIG AND HOW SMALL
IS SMALL
The Sizes of Everything and Why
by
Timothy Paul Smith
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of
Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a
registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in
certain other countries c
© Timothy Paul Smith 2013
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2013
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of
Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by
licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside
the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University
Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of
America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013937705
ISBN 978–0–19–968119–8
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith
and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the
materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
5
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
1. From Quarks to the Cosmos: An Introduction
2. Scales of the Living World
3. Big Numbers; Avogadro’s Number
4. Scales of Nature
5. Little Numbers; Boltzmann’s and Planck’s Constants
6. The Sand Reckoner
7. Energy
8. Fleeting Moments of Time
9. Deep and Epic Time
10. Down to Atoms
11. How Small Is Small
12. Stepping Into Space: the Scales of the Solar System
13. From the Stars to the Edge of the Universe
14. A Little Chapter about Truly Big Numbers
15. Forces That Sculpture Nature and Shape Destiny
Index
6
List of Figures
1.1 The original definition and measurement of the meter.
1.2 Towns embedded in counties, embedded in states, embedded
in nations.
2.1 The relationship between surface and volume.
2.2 As towns grow into cities the traffic for supplies must
increase.
2.3 A collection of Littorina saxatilis (periwinkle) collected in
Scotland.
2.4 Savanna elephant Loxodonta african, Loxodonta catherdralus
and Notre Dame de Paris.
3.1 Loschmidt’s method for determining the size of a molecule.
4.1 The Beaufort and Saffir–Simpson scales and windspeed.
4.2 The Richter scale versus the Mercalli scale.
4.3 The number of hurricanes in the North Atlantic (2003–2012)
as a function of windspeed.
4.4 The Mohs scale versus the absolute hardness of minerals.
4.5 The stars of Orion as reported in the Almagest.
4.6 The frets and related frequencies of a guitar.
5.1 Reversible and nonreversible collisions on a pool table.
5.2 Order as shown with a die and pennies.
5.3 The distribution of light described by Planck’s law.
5.4 The Planck length.
7
6.1 Eratosthenes’ method for measuring the size of the Earth.
6.2 Aristarchus’s method for measuring the size of the Moon.
6.3 Surveying the distance to unreachable points with angles
and baselines.
6.4 Aristarchus’s method for measuring the size of and distance
to the Sun.
6.5 The size of a geocentric and a heliocentric universe.
7.1 Energy densities for chemical and nuclear fuels.
7.2 The energy that is released when hydrogen burns, at the
molecular level.
7.3 The octane molecule.
7.4 Energy from nuclear fission.
8.1 The analemma, as viewed from New York City.
8.2 The discovery of the omega particle.
9.1 Solar versus sidereal time.
9.2 The decay of carbon-14 used for dating.
9.3 The layers or strata of the Grand Canyon.
9.4 The supercontinent Pangaea about 200–300 million years
ago.
10.1 The cross section of a standard meter bar from the 1880s.
10.2 A marching band performs a wheel and demonstrates
interference.
10.3 Laser light on a single hair shows an interference pattern.
10.4 Trees in an orchard demonstrate the facets in a crystal.
8
10.5 The interference pattern of X-rays from a crystal and DNA.
10.6 Wavefunctions of the hydrogen atom.
10.7 The periodic table of the elements.
11.1 Detail from a small part of the table of nuclides.
11.2 The table of nuclides.
11.3 The nuclear force.
11.4 An image of a nucleus made of protons and neutrons with
quarks inside of them.
11.5 A collection of different types of particles made of quarks.
11.6 The interaction between a proton and neutron in terms of
pions and quarks.
11.7 The interaction between quarks in terms of gluons and color
charge.
11.8 The electric charge distribution of a neutron.
12.1 Kepler’s third law demonstrated by Jupiter’s moons and the
planets.
12.2 The transit of Venus as seen by two separate observers.
12.3 Some of the moons in our solar system.
12.4 The rings of Saturn.
12.5 The Titus–Bode law.
13.1 Parallax of a near star.
13.2 The H–R diagram of star color versus luminosity.
13.3 A map of the Milky Way.
9
13.4 The Andromeda galaxy.
13.5 The Doppler effect in water waves.
13.6 Comparison of the size of galaxies, group, superclusters and
the universe.
13.7 The large-scale structure of the universe.
14.1 Everything is small compared to infinity.
15.1 Different forces of nature dominate different scales.
15.2 Proton–proton fusion.
10