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

• 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 jump by a human being (Javier Sotomayor)^[2]
• 8.95 m — longest 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