unit of length used chiefly in measuring wavelengths of light, equal to 10−10 metre, or 0.1 nanometer. It is named for the 19th-century Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström. The angstrom and multiples of it, the micron (104 Å) and the millimicron (10 Å), are also used to measure such quantities as molecular diameters and the thickness of films on liquids.
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