Nanotoxcitiy: Size and Scale Teacher Resource
Print outs of all necessary documents are below.
Continue down the page if you wish to use the website version.
If you would prefer to print off a paper copy of this activity, click onto the student activity 1 document link to the right.
Activity 1 Student Version
Activity 1 Teacher Resource
To the left is the teacher resource to accompany the student version to aid in understanding and teaching the material. Included are suggested solutions
Curriculum
Size and scale of nanotechnology
Background Content:
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.
This activity will get students and teachers to comprehend the super tiny size that is the nanoscale by comparing common objects with nano-length objects; Using “The Scale of the Universe” interactive model which one will be able to find and visualise structures of different lengths.
The model is accessed via this link: http://htwins.net/scale2/
There is also some useful background on nanoscale at the following website for further reading and comprehension: https://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/nano-size
1
2
3
4
Different Measurements of Length
Each measurement is a magnitude smaller or larger than the next.
The units of measurement for length go in descending order from kilometre to nanometre as follows:
1 KM contain 1000m.
1 m contains 100cm.
1 cm contains 10mm.
1 mm contains 1000um.
1 um contains 1000 nm.
Picometers is the next measurement down but this activity will not take the students to sizes smaller than the nanoscale.
Example of comparisons of nanoscale to normal objects that can be told to the students:
-
If a marble is 1 nanometre wide than the earth is one metre wide.
-
A sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometres thick.
Student Answers
Rank the following items activity.
The students will rank the items below. These are already in the correct descending order. Prompt the students in a class discussion as to what units of measurement they think they should measure each item with.
The students will do the activity again but this time using the “Scale of the universe” interactive tool find the following items and record their measurement. Rank them in order of largest to smallest.
Discussion Question Answers.
References:
1. Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao, 28/05/2008, “Nanometres and Nanoscale”, retrieved from https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/1651-nanometres-and-nanoscale
2. National Nanotechnology Initiative, n.d., “Nano.gov, National Nanotechnology Initiative”, viewed 10/9/18, https://www.nano.gov/
3. Huang, M., Huang, C., n.d., “The Scale of the Universe”, online interactive scale tool, viewed 10/9/18, http://htwins.net/scale2/