[freshman level homework question] what would be a reasonable unit to use to measure the following? ?

Question

thank you everyone...=] i appreciate it

Answer 1

bacterium is like saying bacteria, you know the small invisible germs everyone is afraid of,, you would have to use a very small unti of measurement.. try nanometer for that one.

Answer 2

For a bowling ball, I'd use something like kilograms.

For an aspirin, I'd use grams.  They're pretty small.

For a drop of medicine, that's a small volume, so I'd use milliliters.

The idea is that you don't want a measurement that's too big or too small.  You could very well describe a bowling ball that weighed 4,500 grams, but it's easier to think of it as 4.5 kilograms.  I could give my height in milimeters or miles, but that would just annoy people!

>>what is bacterium?!

Singular for "bacteria".  It's 1 bacterium, 2 bacteria.  They're microscopic organisms.  For something too small for the human eye to see, you'll want to use a measurement that's really, really small.  Nanometers or micrometers come to mind.

Answer 3

The purpose of this exercise is familiarize yourself with "Standard Units" There is a system known as the SI system or "System Internaionale" which is a list of units in there standard form.

For mass we use grams....

Bowling Ball = kg , kilograms

Aspirin Tablet = g, grams

Dropper = mL , mililiters

Bacteria is a tricky one, its a micro-organism.  The term micro means 10^-6 or 1 millionth.  So the unit would be...

µ m  ,  micro meters

the u is the greek symbol "mu"

Here is a list of the most common SI units...

http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units....

Also a good idea is to know the sizes which are represented by powers of 10...

http://www.alcyone.com/max/reference/phy...

Answer 4

Mass of a bowling ball - pounds or kilograms

Mass of an aspirin tablet - solid ounces or grams

Dropperful of medicine - tablespoons (or fluid ounces) or milliliters.

From WordWeb dictionary:

"bacterium - (microbiology) single-celled or non cellular spherical or spiral or rod-shaped organisms lacking chlorophyll that reproduce by fission; important as pathogens and for biochemical properties; taxonomy is difficult; often considered to be plants."

For bacterium that are this tiny -  micrograms, but even that is too large.  I cannot imagine any instrument so delicate that it could weigh a single-celled organism, I doubt that there are any in existence.

Answer 5

Bowling ball-Pounds and ounces or kilograms

Asprin-milligrams

Dropper of medicine-millilitres or microlitres

A typical bacterium has a rigid cell wall and a thin, rubbery cell membrane surrounding the fluid, or cytoplasm (sigh-toe-plasm), inside the cell. A bacterium contains all of the genetic information needed to make copies of itself—its DNA—in a structure called a chromosome (crow-moe-soam). In addition, it may have extra loose bits of DNA called plasmids floating in the cytoplasm. Bacteria also have ribosomes (rye-bo-soams), tools necessary for copying DNA so bacteria can reproduce. Some have threadlike structures called flagella that they use to move.