Quarters: about 24 million nm in diameter.
How does the world around you compare to the nano world? In this activity, you can print out a ruler that’s marked in inches and nanometers so you can take measurements to relate things back to nanometers! Make sure you print out the file at 100% scale.
What you need
- Paper and printer
- Scissors
- Printable template
What to do
- Print out the template
- Cut out the ruler along the edge
- Measure things around your home, school, or neighborhood in nanometers!
What you’ll see
The sizes you measure in nanometers will have some big numbers compared to inches. That’s because a nanometer is really really small! The nano world is tiny compared to the world that you normally see.
Some conversions
1 inch = 2.54 cm = 25.4 million nm
1 nm = 0.000 001 m = 10-9 m
1 nm = 0.000 000 01 cm = 10-7 cm
1 mm = 0.001 m = 10-3 m = 1,000,000 nm = 1 million nm
1 m = 1 billion nm