Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man within a square of side 1.83 metres and a circle about 1.2 metres in radius

To help compare different orders of magnitude this page lists lengths between one metre and ten metres.

Distances shorter than 1 m

[edit] Conversions

1 metre is:

• 10 decimetres
• 100 centimetres
• 1000 millimetres
• 39.37 inches
• 3.28 feet
• side of square with area 1 m²
• edge of cube with surface area 6 m² and volume 1 m³
• radius of circle with area 3.14 m²
• radius of sphere with surface area 12.56 m² and volume 4.19 m³

[edit] Human-defined scales and structures

• approximate height of the top part of a doorknob on a door
• 1.435 m — Standard gauge of railway track used by about 60% of railways in the world = 4' 8½"
• 2.77 - 3.44 m — wavelength of the broadcast radio FM band 87–108 MHz
• 3.05 m — The length of an old Mini
• 8.38 m — The length of a London Bus (Routemaster)

[edit] Sports

• 3.05 m — (10 feet) height of the basket in basketball
• 2.44 m — height of a football goal.^{[Citation needed]}
• 2.45 m — highest jump by a human being (Javier Sotomayor)^[1]
• 3.048 m (10 feet) — height of the basket in basketball^{[Citation needed]}
• 8.95 m — longest jump by a human being (Mike Powell)^{[Citation needed]}

[edit] Nature

• 1 m — height of Homo floresiensis (the "Hobbit")
• 1.15 m — a pizote (mammal)
• 1.37 m — average height of an Andamanese person
• 1.63 m — (5 feet 4 inches) (or 64 inches) - height of average US female human as of 2002^[update] (source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)).
• 1.75 m — (5 feet 9 inches) - height of average US male human as of 2002^[update] (source: US CDC as per female above)
• 2.72 m — tallest known human being (Robert Wadlow)^{[Citation needed]}
• 2.72 m — (8 feet 11 inches) - height of Robert Wadlow, the tallest human in recorded history
• 3.63 m — the record wingspan for living birds (a Wandering Albatross)
• 5.20 m — height of a giraffe^{[Citation needed]}
• 5.5 m — height of a Baluchitherium, the largest land mammal ever lived
• 7 m — wingspan of Argentavis, the largest flying bird known
• 7.50 m — approximate length of the human gastrointestinal tract

[edit] Astronomical

• 3 - 6 m — approximate diameter of 2003 SQ₂₂₂, a meteoroid

Distances longer than 10 m

[edit] See also

Click on the thumbnail image to jump to the desired Human-scale order of length magnitude article: top-left is 1E-6m, lower-right is 1E5m.

[edit] Notes