1 metre

A clickable mosaic of objects
at scales within direct human experience, from the micrometric (10⁻⁶ m, top left) to the multi-kilometric (10⁵ m, bottom right).

Leonardo da Vinci drew the Vitruvian Man within a square of side 1.83 metres and a circle about 1.2 metres in radius

To help compare different orders of magnitude this page lists lengths between one metre and ten metres. Light travels 1 metre in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Distances shorter than 1 m

Conversions

1 metre is:

• 10 decimetres
• 100 centimetres
• 1000 millimetres
• 39.37 inches
• 3.28 feet
• side of square with area 1 m²
• edge of cube with surface area 6 m² and volume 1 m³
• radius of circle with area 3.14 m²
• radius of sphere with surface area 12.56 m² and volume 4.19 m³

Human-defined scales and structures

• 1 m – approximate height of the top part of a doorknob on a door
• 1.435 m – standard gauge of railway track used by about 60% of railways in the world = 4' 8½"
• 2.77–3.44 m – wavelength of the broadcast radio FM band 87–108 MHz
• 3.05 m – the length of an old Mini
• 8.38 m – the length of a London Bus (Routemaster)

Sports

• 3.05 m – (10 feet) height of the basket in basketball
• 2.44 m – height of an association football goal^[1]
• 2.45 m – highest high jump by a human being (Javier Sotomayor)^[2]
• 8.95 m – longest long jump by a human being (Mike Powell)^[3]

Nature

• 1 m – height of Homo floresiensis (the "Hobbit")
• 1.15 m – a pizote (mammal)
• 1.37 m – average height of an Andamanese person
• 1.63 m – (5 feet 4 inches) (or 64 inches) - height of average US female human as of 2002 (source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)).
• 1.75 m – (5 feet 8 inches) - height of average US male human as of 2002 (source: US CDC as per female above)
• 2.72 m – (8 feet 11 inches) - tallest known human being (Robert Wadlow)^[4]
• 3.63 m – the record wingspan for living birds (a wandering albatross)
• 5.20 m – height of a giraffe^[5]
• 5.5 m – height of a Baluchitherium, the largest land mammal ever lived
• 7 m – wingspan of Argentavis, the largest flying bird known
• 7.50 m – approximate length of the human gastrointestinal tract

Astronomical

• 3–6 m – approximate diameter of 2003 SQ222, a meteoroid

Distances longer than 10 m

Notes

1. Laws of the Game (PDF), FIFA
2. IAAF International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF.org - Statistics - Top Lists, archived from the original on 2008-01-16, retrieved 2010-04-09
3. IAAF International Association of Athletics Federations - IAAF.org - Past Results, archived from the original on 2011-06-04, retrieved 2010-04-09
4. "Tallest Man". Guinness World Records. Archived from the original on 2011-06-05. Retrieved 2010-06-10.
5. Dagg, A. I. (1971), Mammalian Species 5 (Giraffa camelopardalis ed.), pp. 1–8