• Question: how many atoms are there in the world ???????

    Asked by mrbubalubaunicorn to Claire, Rob, Kate, Matt, Sam on 15 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by maisydeykin.
    • Photo: Robert Woolfson

      Robert Woolfson answered on 15 Jun 2013:


      Short answer – there are about 13 octodecillion atoms or 130,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in the world. In the universe as a whole there’s a lot more. For the universe as a whole, add another 30 or so zeroes on the end.

      Long answer – There is a unit in chemistry called the mole, which tells us how many atoms are in a kg of stuff. It’s about 6 billion trillion atoms per kilogram. The world weighs around 5 thousand billion trillion kg. Using those two numbers together gives a lot of atoms.

    • Photo: Claire Lee

      Claire Lee answered on 17 Jun 2013:


      “Octodecillion” is totally going to be the word I use when I next play hangman! Thanks Robert 🙂

      That is a LOT of atoms.

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