Nanotechnology refers to technology that studies small things less than 100nm in length or thickness . To understand nanoscale, common everyday units of measurement must be considered to provide context of how small the nanoworld is .

Everyday measurements include: Kilometre - such as when referring to distances driven, metres such as the length of a room, centimetres when referring to the diameter of a balloon and millimetres when referring to tiny animals like ants. However, there are both living (biotic) and nonliving (abiotic) things that are magnitudes smaller than an ant or even grains of salt that can be measured. This would be referring to the micrometre world and smaller, to the nanoworld.

There are matter smaller than 1 nanometre in length. However, this is outside today’s topic. In a metre there are 1 billion nanometres ! This is exceptionally small. The human eye cannot see anything smaller than 0.1 millimetres which is the same as 100 micrometers or 100,000 nanometres, instead requiring a microscope to visualise such small objects. Only special high magnification microscopes can enable scientists to see nanosized objects, but only objects greater than 200 nanometres. Other techniques are used to confirm the existence of other structures smaller than this.

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This activity will enable students to comprehend the super tiny size that is the nano scale by comparing common objects with nano length objects. Using “The Scale of the Universe” interactive model you will be able to find and visualise structures of different lengths.

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The model is accessed via this link: http://htwins.net/scale2/ 

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There is also some useful background information on nanoscale at the following website for further reading and comprehension: https://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/nano-size

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