Name: Just how small is an atom?
Uploaded: 2012-04-25T15:24:02Z
Duration: 5 min 27 s
Description: Just how small are atoms? Really, really, really small. This fast-paced animation from TED-Ed uses metaphors (imagine a blueberry the size of a football stadium!) to give a visceral sense of just how small atoms are. Lesson by Jon Bergmann, animation by Cognitive Media.

Just how small are atoms? Really, really, really small. This fast-paced animation from TED-Ed uses metaphors (imagine a blueberry the size of a football stadium!) to give a visceral sense of just how small atoms are. Lesson by Jon Bergmann, animation by Cognitive Media.

Just how small is an atom?

Atoms defy intuition with their minuscule scale and surprising structure. If every atom in a grapefruit became the size of a blueberry, the fruit would swell to the size of Earth. Most of an atom is actually empty space, with a nucleus so tiny that if the atom were a football stadium, its nucleus would be just a marble at the center. This dense nucleus packs nearly all the atom's mass into an unimaginably small volume.