What is the mass of a cell?

Answer 1

Different types of cells are different sizes, and there are different estimates of their mass. Here's one website with info about the mass of a bacterium:

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/LouisSiu.shtml

Answer 2

Since a cell is about 10-15 microns in length and assuming its radius is no more then 5 microns that would mean it would have a volume of 523.33 microns^3 which is 5.23*10-10ml and assuming the density of the cell being around the same as water since cells can be suspended for periods of time in water until they ultimately settle to the bottom... so at around 37 degrees water has a density of 998kg/m^3 which is .998g/ml so, we can now conclude that 5.21954*10^-10g is the mass of a an average cell. So from this information we can determine the weight of RBC.

What do enthrocytes look like? Well they are not spherical, but rather flat and look like a pool raft. For simplicity let us ignore its concavity... So RBCs are about 8 microns in length and about 3 microns in width so they are flat and shorter then other cells for examples WBCs/ lymphocytes. So doing the same math as before (just this time the object is not spherical), we get 192microns^3 which is 1.92*10^-10 ml and assuming that the RBC has a higher density then water because hemoglobin is found in the RBCs and therefore iron is contained weighing the whole cell down.

*extra: about 2.5 grams of iron is found in the blood which is about 60% of the total about of iron in the body.

So for guessing purposes let us say that its density is 1025kg/m^3 which is 1.025g/ml so we can now say, that RBCs have an approximate mass of 1.968*10^-10grams

Answer 3

That's a tough one to answer because its mass changes depending on how oxygenated it is at any given time and they are not all the same exact size. I can give you some dimensions though. They are bioconcave discs that have a mean diameter of 7.8 micrometers. At the edges where they are thickest, they are 2.5 micrometers thick and in the center 1 micrometer or less. They have an average volume of 90-95 cubic micrometers.