Nano Ruler

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

What to do

  1. Print out the template
  2. Cut out the ruler along the edge
  3. 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