Here we need to compare the orders of magnitude of two measures.
We will see that the bacteria is<em> 300 times larger than the virus.</em>
We know that:
The diameter of the virus-cell is:
The diameter of the bacteria cell is:
So, to compare them, first notice that both are in the same units, meters, so we only need to <u>compare the numbers</u>.
Is common sense to identify the one with the largest exponent as the largest number, and the largest exponent is -7, thus <u>the bacteria should be the larger one.</u>
But let's prove this with math, remember the property:
Let's take the quotient between the diameters and see what we get, I will use the <u>diameter of the bacteria in the numerator</u>, thus <u>if the quotient is larger than 1, it would mean that the bacteria is greater and by how much.</u>
So we can say that the bacteria is 3*10^2 = 3*100 = 300 times larger than the virus.
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