If you were smooshed down to a 1 atom-thick pancake, how big would you be? What if you were smooshed down to a 1 atom-wide string, how long would you be?
Well, let's say
lbsdrag ( kg).
That means total area as a two-dimensional sheet of atoms is mi2 ( km2).
This is equivalent to: a square mi ( km) to a side, a circle with radius mi ( km), x area of New York City, x area of Hong Kong, and x area of Rhode Island.
What about as a string? As a string, length would be mi ( km). This is equivalent to: light years, x distance to North Star, or x distance to Betelgeuse.
How do we know all this? Well, body is made up of the following mass of elements:
Now we have to figure out how many atoms that is. We can do that using the molar mass—yay chemistry! And since atoms are basically just little circles, we can find the area of all these circles with our trusty πr2 formula, pack them together, and find the total area of a 1-atom-thick sheet. For a string, just double the radius for each atom and sum them up.
Also interesting is to check out how much space the heaviest people would take up.