A View from the Back of the Envelope top

Mass
kg (kilogram)
Scale of some things
Landmarks
[ Scale | Landmarks | Other ]

Rough Draft

Conversions

unit
long ton (2240lb) 103 × 1.016
metric ton (MT) 103 × 1.000
short ton (2000lb) 103 × 0.9072
pound (lb) 100 × 0.4536
ounce (oz) 10-2 × 2.835 (avoirdupois flavor)
gram (g) 10-3 × 1.000
carat (metric) 10-4 × 2.000 useless?
J 10-17 × 1.113 m=E/c2
amu 10-27 × 1.661 "atomic mass unit". 1 proton.
eV 10-36 × 1.782
10 ×

Notes

Currently in pre-first-draft state...
Layout still needs work.
Flesh out.
Include compact versions?
More value tables.
whale, sequoia
kiloDaltons (kDA)
landmark - nucleon mass

Having a SI base unit with a prefix (kilo-) embeded in its name is an anoying situation. For instance, with any other unit, a mega-mumble is 106 SI-unit-mumbles. But a mega-gram is only 103 SI-unit-kilograms (106 / 103= 103). I am temped to ignore that "kilo" is a prefix, treat "kilogram" as an opaque name, and speak of mega-kilograms. Blech. I have included such units above (eg, "mkg" is "milli-kilogram", aka gram).

30      x 2.0        Sun [1][8]
27      x 1.9        Jupiter [1][5]
27      x 0.57       Saturn [5]
25      x 0.60       Earth [1][5]
24      x 0.64       Mars [5]
24      x 0.33       Mercury [5]

23      x 1.40       Titan [6]
23      x 0.73       Moon [1][6][8]
23      x 0.48       Europa [1]
20      x 0.51       Phobos [6]

A View from the Back of the Envelope
Comments encouraged. - Mitchell N Charity <mcharity@lcs.mit.edu>

Notes:
  Perhaps 1/10 of total stellar mass of Virgo cluster is intergalactic stars
     (Nature 98 Jan 29 p461).
  Ants are >25% of animal biomass in Amazon rainforest. (Nature 98 Jan 29 p447).

Doables:
  For a mass flow page:
    A = 5.7e-12 kg/s [Klein p433]  Check with modern numbers.
    "How many years for a kg?"
    Find some high A example which gives 1kg/s.
    Touch on ions? (as high mass currents)

History:
  1998.Aug.03  Added sections History and Doables.  Added 1 A.
  1997.late    Created.