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Mystery #2Tier 2-3microbes / viruses / scale

A bacterium is already tiny, so how much smaller still is a virus?

You have probably heard that a single germ is far too small to see. Bacteria are already so tiny that millions would fit on the head of a pin. And yet a virus is smaller still, smaller than the germ that is already too small to see. Just how much tinier can something get?

A coloured electron microscope image of a single human cell, blue and green, studded with tiny yellow virus particles.
Photo: NIAID · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Your guess

Take a guess: how much smaller than a bacterium do you think a virus is?

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