6 ms·
How can something so small have more surface area than a basketball court?
by LAMike 13y ago
How can something so small have more surface area than a basketball court?
- sigterm 13y agofun fact: there are a few miles of metal interconnect (wires) inside the microprocessor chip you are using right now [1]. [1] www.itrs.net/Links/2007ITRS/2007_Chapters/2007_Interconnect.pdf
- pokpokpok 13y agoask Mandelbrot
- krasin 13y agothere's no magic here. For example, activated carbon [1] has a surface of 500 m^2 per gram. It's just a very porous structure. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_carbon
- krasin 13y agoan easier analogy: 100-stories building that stays on 1 cm^2 area has a total surface of 100 cm^2. Now, make the height of this building 1 cm, and you have 100 cm^2 surface in 1 cm^3 volume. Make it 1M floors, and you are talking about 1M cm^2 = 100 m^2
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoImagine a sheet of paper the size of a football field but infinitesimally thin. Now, fold it in half. Fold it in half again. Continue folding it in half until it's the size of a postage stamp. You now have something with the surface area of a football field that you can easily fit in your wallet.
- dredmorbius 13y agoYour lungs have roughly half the surface area of a tennis court. Much internal folding. http://books.google.com/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=area+tennis+court+alveoli#v=onepage&q=area%20tennis%20court%20alveoli&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=pAuiWvNHwZcC&pg=PA120&lpg=P... Activated carbon filters are another material with a phenomenal surface area.