How Big is a Nanometer? IBM chip UMass Logo TI mirror array

Adapted from Nanosense This activity http://nanosense.org/activities/sizematters/sizeandscale/SM_Lesson2Teacher.pdf On our website www.umassk12.net/nano/Saturday Other useful nanoscience materials http://nanosense.org/index.html Other nanotechnology and power of ten resources: http://www.umassk12.net/nano/resources.htm

The Nano Scale Nano materials are typically 1 to 100 nanometers in size 1 nanometer = 1/1,000,000,000 meters How do such materials fit into the overall scale of objects in nature? And how big is a nanometer in terms of something basic?

We’ll use powers of ten Handy way to express very large or very small numbers. Easier than writing lots of zeros! 106 reads 'ten to the 6' is 1 followed by 6 zeros, 1,000,000 is 1.0 with the point moved right by 6 places

Negative powers of 10 10-6 reads 'ten to the minus 6' is 1 divided by 106 , 1/1,000,000 is 1.0 with the point moved left by six places, 0.000,001

How big is a meter? Width? ~2 meters Height? ~ 1 meter

101 meters = 10 meters Adapted from http://microcosm.web.cern.ch/Microcosm/P10/english/welcome.html

100 meter = 1 meter

10-1 meters = 0.1 meters fly

10-2 meters = 0.01m 1 centimeter = 1 cm

10-3 meters = 0.001 meters 1 millimeter = 1 mm Fly’s eye

10-4 meters = 0.0001 meters Fly’s eye as seen with electron microscope

10-5 meters = 0.00001 meters Red blood cells

10-6 meters = 0.000,001 meters Bacteria

10-7 meters = 0.000,000,1 meters Computer Chip details 10-7 meters

10-8 meters = 0.000,000,01 meters “Quantum corral” of iron atoms on a copper surface

10-9 meters = 0.000,000,001 meters DNA (1 nanometer = 1 nm) 3 nanometers DNA

10-10 meters = 0.000,000,000,1 meters Carbon atom, with 6 electrons and a nucleus

10-14 meters = 0.000,000,000,000,01 meters Carbon nucleus, made up of 6 protons and 6 neutrons

Proton (or neutron) composed of 3 quarks 10-15 meters = 0.000,000,000,000,001 meters 1 femtometer = 1 fm Proton (or neutron) composed of 3 quarks

So how big is a nanometer? Carbon atom diameter ~ 10-10 m 10 x 10-10 m = 10-9 m 1 nanometer ~ 10 atoms wide Nano wires and tubes are 1-100 x 10 atoms in diameter Nano films are a 1-100 x 10 atoms in thickness Nano particles are 1 to 100 x 10 atoms in diameter

The Size Me Challenge Each team has an envelope containing A 3 page list of powers of ten 24 picture cards Place each card next to the appropriate power of ten Size matches will be approximate Some matches will be easy, some will be hard!

That’s all for now