ABSTRACT
As children, we learned to deal with everyday objects having size and scale dimensions that are naturally “sized up” by our senses, and we were mystified and enthralled by anything much larger (Gulliver) or smaller (Tom Thumb) (see Figure 7.1). It is indeed much more difficult to get a feel for or understand the consequences of dimensions of physical systems many orders of magnitude larger or smaller than what we commonly experience. Of all our senses, vision informs our mind the most. The unaided
eyes generally give us the ability to discern things as small in size as an ant’s eye or the point of a pin (approximate size, 50 µm). However, telescopes and microscopes continue to improve and greatly extend our sensory capabilities in our quest to understand and utilize our material world better, including systems spanning extreme length scales from the astronomical to the atomic. These new sets of eyes have greatly assisted us in assessing the size and scale of diverse natural and artificial material systems. Today telescopes allow us to see galaxies 13 billion light-years away (1025 m), and microscopes allow us to see even single atoms (about 10-10 m)!
