How to visualize one part per million - Kim Preshoff + The TED-Ed Community

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“Parts per million” is a scientific unit of measurement that counts the number of units of one substance per one million units of another. But because it’s hard to conceptualize really large numbers, it can be difficult to wrap our brains around what “one part per million” really means. Kim Preshoff (with help from 100+ animators from the TED-Ed Community) shares nine helpful ways to visualize it.

Lesson by Kim Preshoff, animation by TED-Ed Community.

What does it mean to be one in a million?

Not in the greeting card sense,

in the scientific sense,

where one part per million
is a unit of measurement.

Parts per million counts the number
of units of one substance

per one million units of another.

It can measure concentrations when
a small amount makes a big difference.

For example, a concentration of just
35 ppm of carbon monoxide in the air

is poisonous to us.

We encounter measurements like this
pretty often,

but because it's hard to conceptualize
really large numbers,

it's difficult to wrap our brain around
what one part per million really means.

So here are nine helpful ways
to visualize it.

If you had 11,363 pianos-worth
of piano keys,

one of those keys would be about
one part per million.

So would a single granule of sugar
among 273 sugar cubes,

one second in eleven and a half days,

or four dots in the painting,

"A Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande Jatte."

Your bath tub's capacity
is about 60 gallons,

so seven drops of ink would be
one part per million.

The English version of the Harry Potter
series has 1,084,170 words,

which makes "hippogriff" on page 221
of "The Prisoner of Azkaban"

a little less than one part per million.

A million kernels of corn
is about 1,250 ears,

so one kernel in that truckload
would be one part per million.

There are 10 million bricks in
the Empire State Building,

so one part per million
would be a pile of just ten.

And finally, 100 people worked together
to animate this video.

Collectively, they have about 10 million
hairs on their heads.

Pluck ten of those hairs,
and you have one in a million.