Practice question · Estimate
Development turns a speck of a few silver atoms into a fully developed grain. By roughly what power of ten does it amplify the latent image?
Estimate on a scale from ten to the zero (0) to ten to the fifteenth (15).
Hints
- A crystal holds of the order of a thousand million silver ions.
- The answer is between eight and nine.
Show the answer
9 (answers within ±1.5 count)
Why
Around ten to the ninth. Four atoms become a grain of perhaps a thousand million, an amplification of a hundred million or more. It is the largest chemical amplification in routine industrial use in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and it is why film beat every rival imaging chemistry for a hundred years.
Practise The Latent Image
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