Microscope Help!!! Please Urgent?

Question

Explain why the size of objects viewed under high power is usually recorded in micrometres (um) , rather than millimetres (mm)

(1000 um = 1 mm)

Answer 1

because having to write that many zero's would just get repetative after a while....that saves time

Answer 2

You could write an item measuring 100 um as 0.10 mm. However, too many people will leave off the preceding 0 and write it as .10 mm. As a quick glance, it will then look like and can be misread as 10 because the decimal mark can be a small small dot in some fonts or handwritings, and there is no space to tipoff the reader that something is missing. Satellites crash and all sorts of bad things can happen with this type of mistake.

Since many things viewed at high power may be <1 mm, a different power of 10 is used, namely ten to the minus 6th, or the micrometer, for convenience and to reduce reading errors.

Answer 3

I am no scientist but let me see if this is correct.

Microscope measurements tend to be recorded in micrometres because of the size of the particle or object they are viewing is simply too small to be measured or counted in millimetres.

It's like trying to measure the length of a 120 meter building with a simple 12" ruler.