Science Common Sense

1787 - How does something work at the nanoscale or What is at the nanoscale?

Imagine things that are too small to see with your eyes. The nanoscale is when objects are 1 to 100 nanometers in size, which is really, really tiny (1 nanometer = 0.000001 millimeters).

At this scale, objects start behaving differently than the things you see in everyday life. They can be made of just a few atoms, which is like a handful of LEGO blocks.

Some things you'd find at the nanoscale include:

• Tiny building blocks of materials (like LEGO blocks)
• Tiny machines (like robots) that can move and do things on their own
• Parts of living things, like cells, proteins, and DNA
• Special particles that can be used to deliver medicine to the right place in the body
• Tiny computer chips that make smartphones and laptops work fast.

Some cool things happen at the nanoscale:

• Materials can become super strong or really flexible
• Things can be made to stick together really well or to slide past each other easily
• Particles can move around really fast or really slow
• Some objects can change their shape when they're at the nanoscale

So, the nanoscale is like a magical world where the normal rules don't always apply, and scientists are still discovering new and exciting things there.