Question

Using the white scale bar provided, approximately how long (tall) is TMV?

Option 1: 50 micrometers
Option 2: 100 micrometers
Option 3: 150 micrometers
Option 4: 200 micrometers

Answer 1

The Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) is approximately 100 nanometers (nm) or 0.1 micrometers (µm) in size. None of the options provided (50 µm, 100 µm, 150 µm, 200 µm) are correct as they are all significantly larger than the size of TMV.

Step-by-step explanation:

When considering the size of the Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), it is important to refer to comparisons of biological microstructures. TMV is quite small when compared to cells and bacteria. Specifically, a typical virus measures about 100 nanometers (nm), which is much smaller than a bacterium (approximately 1 micrometer (µm)) and much much smaller than a typical plant or animal cell (10-100 µm). If we translate the size of TMV into micrometers knowing that 1 µm is equal to 1000 nm, TMV would be about 0.1 µm in size since it is about 100 nm. Hence, when comparing TMV to the provided scale bar options, none of the size options (50 µm, 100 µm, 150 µm, 200 µm) would be correct, as TMV is much smaller than the smallest scale option provided.