Final answer:
It takes about fifty million atoms to form a line that is 1 centimeter long, emphasizing the incredibly small scale of atoms.
Step-by-step explanation:
The smallest piece of an element that maintains the identity of that element is called an atom. Atoms are incredibly tiny; it takes roughly fifty million atoms to form a line that measures 1 centimeter in length. To illustrate, the period at the end of a sentence contains several million atoms, and an object as thin as a spider web strand is colossal when compared to the scale of individual atoms.
A single carbon atom has a diameter of about 0.000000015 centimeter. This means it would take approximately 7,000 carbon atoms to match the diameter of a spider silk strand. When we consider that a copper penny contains around 28 sextillion atoms, and a billion lead atoms only weigh about 3 x 10-13 grams, we can start to appreciate just how minuscule atoms really are.