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Microbiology · Chapter 2

How Small Is a Microbe?

Bacteria, viruses, and the cells they infect are all invisible to the naked eye — but not all for the same reason. Drag the zoom slider to fall through the scale, from millimeters to nanometers, and watch a human cell, a bacterium, and a virus each come into view.

Naked eye

Field of view ~4 mm across
The scale of smalldrag the slider to zoom in
Naked eyeZoom in →Electron microscope