Above all, atoms are tiny—very tiny indeed. Half a million of them lined up shoulder to shoulder could hide behind a human hair. On such a scale an individual atom is essentially impossible to imagine, but we can of course try.
而且，原子很小——確實很小。50萬個原子排成一行還遮不住一根人的頭發。以這樣的比例，一個原子小得簡直無法想像。不過，我們當然可以試一試。
Start with a line the length of a millimeter: Now imagine that line divided into a thousand equal widths. Each of those widths is a micron. This is the scale of microorganisms. A typical paramecium, for instance, is about two microns wide, 0.002 millimeters, which is really very small. If you wanted to see with your naked eye a paramecium swimming in a drop of water, you would have to enlarge the drop until it was some forty feet across. However, if you wanted to see the atoms in the same drop, you would have to make the drop fifteen miles across.
先從1毫米著手，就是這么長的一根線：－?，F在，我們來想像一下，這根線被分成了寬度相等的1000段。每一段的寬度是1微米。這就是微生物的大小。比如，一個標準的草履蟲——一種單細胞的淡水小生物——大約為2微米寬，也就是0.002毫米，它確實小得不得了。要是你想用肉眼看到草履蟲在一滴水里游，你非得把這滴水放大到12米寬。然而，要是你想看到同一滴水里的原子，你非得把這滴水放大到24公里寬。
Atoms, in other words, exist on a scale of minuteness of another order altogether. To get down to the scale of atoms, you would need to take each one of those micron slices and shave it into ten thousand finer widths. That's the scale of an atom: one ten-millionth of a millimeter. It is a degree of slenderness way beyond the capacity of our imaginations, but you can get some idea of the proportions if you bear in mind that one atom is to the width of a millimeter line as the thickness of a sheet of paper is to the height of the Empire State Building.
換句話說，原子完全存在于另一種微小的尺度上。若要知道原子的大小，你就得拿起這類微米大小的東西，把它切成10000個更小的東西。那才是原子的大小：1毫米的千萬分之一．這么小的東西遠遠超出了我們的想像范圍。但是，只要記住，一個原子對于上述那條1毫米的線，相當于一張紙的厚度對于紐約帝國大廈的高度，它的大小你就有了個大致的概念。
來源:可可英語 http://www.ccdyzl.cn/Article/201612/485690.shtml
評論
打印
