submitted 4 weeks ago by Stitch0815@feddit.org to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] wewbull@feddit.uk 2 points 4 weeks ago

Angstroms hurt my brain. A $10^{-10}$ of a metre, but not a nanometre or a picometre. Just...why?

[-] Hule@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

... However, they soon realized that the definition of the metre at the time, based on a material artifact, was not accurate enough for their work. So, around 1907 they defined their own unit of length, which they called "Ångström", based on the wavelength of a specific spectral line. It was only in 1960, when the metre was redefined in the same way, that the angstrom became again equal to 10^10 metre. Wikipedia

Edit: also some atoms are about 1 angstrom in size, so it's convenient, I guess..