Nearest reference
Characteristic lengthOne metre
1 m
The starting frame: a familiar unit before the camera moves inward.
Into the small · 10⁰ → 10⁻²⁰ m
Keep zooming into the invisible
Travel continuously inward from one metre through cells, DNA, atoms and nuclei to length scales probed by current searches for quark substructure.
Jump to a small length
Enter a number and unit to locate its nearest reference on the same logarithmic timeline.
Reading a continuous scale
Not every small length means the same thing
Cells and viruses can be compared by typical diameter, but DNA and atoms are not hard-edged balls. A crystal lattice value is a spacing, while the strong force is described by an interaction range. ScaleTrip therefore separates physical size, typical diameter, spacing, characteristic length and interaction scale.
An experimental limit is not an object size
Below the proton scale, the quark values are not measured radii. They are upper bounds from collision searches that have not revealed substructure. The artwork is therefore a conceptual detector or interaction diagram, not a literal particle surface.
- Human cell
- 10–100 µm
- DNA
- ≈ 2 nm
- Typical atom
- ≈ 0.1–0.3 nm
- Proton charge radius
- 0.84075 fm
- Experimental frontier
- ≈ 10⁻²⁰ m
Method and sources
Ranges stay visible, and source status is explicit
The 54 references run from one metre to 10⁻²⁰ metres in descending order. Camera position is interpolated logarithmically, while scenes cross-zoom using CSS transforms and opacity only. Where a value depends on species, conditions or definition, the interface shows a range and approximation.
- NCBI Bookshelf — representative cell, bacterium and virus scales
- National Human Genome Research Institute — DNA double-helix diameter
- NIST 2022 CODATA — Bohr radius, proton charge radius and Planck length
- CERN CMS — length scale of searches for quark substructure
Theoretical epilogue: the Planck length
1.616255 × 10⁻³⁵ m — This is a theoretical scale assembled from fundamental constants, not a measured object size or the reach of current experiments. It is intentionally separated from the main timeline.