Created by Wyken Seagrave.
The Earth's rotation causes it to bulge out at the equator. Around the equator, its diameter is 12,756 kilometers (7,926 miles). Around the poles, the diameter is 12,720 km (7,900 miles). In Soccearth we use the equatorial diameter of 12,756 kilometers.
According to the laws of football, a soccer ball should have a circumference of 68–70 cm, equivalent to a diameter of 21.64-22.27cm. In Soccearth we take the diameter to be 22cm.
Therefore, to inflate a soccer ball to the size of the Earth, it must be increased in size 57,981,818 times. This is the Soccearth scale.
This is summarised in the following table.
Object | Size in meters |
Earth diameter | 12756000 |
Soccerball diameter | 0.22 |
Scale 1 to: | 57,981,818 |
On Soccearth we are looking at some very small objects. When we measure them, we have to use some very small units of length. In the following table we will use the following abbreviations for these units.
Unit | Size in meters | |
angstrom | 1E-10 | |
nano | nano | |
micron | micron | |
milli | 1.00E-03 |
The folling table shows the sizes of some common objects on Soccearth. This is the source of the data which has been used to create the pages on this site. The sizes we have used are technically called the "Van der Waals" diameters.
Object | Size (longest) | Unit | Source of Data | Soccearth diameter | Units |
Proton | 0.88 | 1.00E-15 | phys.org | 51 | nm |
H van der waals diameter | 0.24 | nano |
Pauling 260
|
14 | mm |
O van der waals diameter | 0.28 | nano |
Pauling 260
|
16 | mm |
N van der waals diameter | 0.3 | nano |
Pauling 260
|
17 | mm |
C van der waals diameter | 0.32 | nano |
Pauling 260
|
19 | mm |
U van der waals | 0.372 | 1E-09 | www.webelements.com | 22 | mm |
Alanine (amino acid) | 0.5 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 29 | mm |
Tryptophan | 0.92 | nano | Discover Studio | 53 | mm |
Diameter DNA | 2.13 | nano | Discover Studio | 124 | mm |
Myoglobin width | 4.3 | nano | Discover Studio | 249 | mm |
Myoglobin depth | 4.1 | nano | Discover Studio | 238 | mm |
Myoglobin height | 2.3 | nano | Discover Studio | 133 | mm |
Hemoglobin | 6.8 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 394 | mm |
Cell Membrane | 9 | nano | 522 | mm | |
50S subunit of ribosome | 12 | nano | Discover Studio | 696 | mm |
Ribosome | 18 | nano | 1,044 | mm | |
Cell Wall bacterial | 20 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 1 | m |
Cell Wall plant | 20 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 1 | m |
HIV | 120 | nano | Wikipedia | 7 | m |
Myosin (large rod-shaped protein) | 160 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 9 | m |
T4 Bacteriophage | 200 | nano | 12 | m | |
Tobacco mosaic virus (rod) | 300 | nano | Lehninger 29 | 17 | m |
Golgi diameter | 1 | micron | Alberts 355 | 58 | m |
Mitochondrion (liver) | 1.5 | micron | Lehninger 29 | 87 | m |
E.coli | 2 | micron | Lehninger 29 | 116 | m |
Typical Bacterium | micron | 120 | m | ||
Nucleolus human fibroblast | 2 | micron | 116 | m | |
Chloroplast (spinach) | 8 | micron | Lehninger 29 | 464 | m |
Vacuole of tobacco | 10 | micron | 580 | m | |
Liver Cell | 20 | micron | Lehninger 29 | 1,160 | m |
Average animal cell | 50 | micron | wiki.answers.com | 2,899 | m |
Soccerball | 0.22 | meter | FIFA Website | 12,756,000 | m |
Length of human DNA | 3 | meters | 173,945,455 | m |