The Planck Length

Making videos for Sixty Symbols often involves dealing with concepts that the human brain can't really comprehend.

A great example this week was our video about the Planck Length.

Written as a decimal number, it is simple enough.

0.000000000000000000000000000000000016 metres

Or to use the scientific notation that scientists insist upon, it is 1.616252(81)×10⁻³⁵ meters.

Seems simple enough, until you realise that it's something like
100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times SMALLER THAN A PROTON!

Here's our main video, featuring Professor Roger Bowley and Professor Laurence Eaves.



And here's some extra footage from Professor Eaves, including some interesting stuff about the far more accessible Planck Mass!



By the way, for those who don't know there is lots of interesting stuff from behind the scenes on Sixty Symbols at our special Flickr page, including scans of the scientists impromptu scrawlings.