1. Introduction to the Nanoscale
Prof. Helen Fawcett, ME

2. What is a nanometer? Scale of measure to the -9 power
Fingernails grow at 1 nm/second
Cut a bacterium 1000x

3. What is a nanometer? 10-9 meters One billion nanometers in a meter
One million times smaller than the head of a pin
A thousand times smaller than a bacterium
10 Hydrogen atoms lined up
A sugar molecule
Your fingernails grow at 1 nm/second: here’s a lab experiment to try: fingernails-and-using.html

4. How can we compare that to objects we can see
An atom is 0.1 to 0.5 nm in diameter
DNA molecules are 2.5 nm wide
Virus is about 100 nm wide, bacterium 1000 nm
Width of human hair – 100,000 nm
Head of a pin – a million nanometers wide
Adult male 2 meters (6 ft. 5 inches) is 2 billion nanometers tall
Source: zeandscale/SM_Lesson2Student.pdf

5. Relative Sizes
Imagine an ant (2 – 3 cm) compared to you, an ant is about 1000x smaller than you
Imagine an ant compared to an amoeba (1 um), the amoeba is 1000x smaller than the ant
A nanometer is 1000x smaller than an amoeba
A person would have to shrink themselves down by a factor of 1000 three times to be the size of a nanometer

6. What is Nanotechnology?
Making things to nanoscale
Technology using science to solve problems
Technology with smallest feature sizes of 10 nm

7. What is Nanotechnology?
Nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field that integrates all aspects of sciences and engineering manipulating nanomaterials
Quantum Dots – 1 – 50 nm diameter
Carbon Nanotubes – 1 – 3 nm in diameter
Graphene – 1 carbon atom thick

8. What is Integrated Nanotechnology?
Chemistry, biology, physics of nanotechnology integrated with engineering
An integrated technology that is collaborative between the fields
Using nanotechnology in standard macroscale/mesoscale settings

9. Sources
Great source for metric measurement visualization conceptshttp://nanosense.sri.com/activities/sizematters/sizea ndscale/SM_Lesson2Student.pdf
e/Day1%20Scale/visualizing_nm.pdf
The Scale of Things: ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/content/sites/default/files/documents/na no-lab-safety.pdf