Puneet Varma (Editor)

Nano

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Nano- (symbol n) is a unit prefix meaning "one billionth". Used primarily with the metric system, this prefix denotes a factor of 10−9 or 0.000000001. It is frequently encountered in science and electronics for prefixing units of time and length.

Examples:

  • One nanometer is about the length that a fingernail grows in one second.
  • Three gold atoms lined up are about one nanometer long.
  • If a toy marble were scaled down to one nanometer wide, Earth would scale to about one meter (3.3 feet) wide.
  • One nanosecond is about the time required for light to travel 30 cm in air, or 20 cm in an optical fiber.

    • The prefix derives from the Greek νᾶνος (Latin nanus), meaning "dwarf". The General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) officially endorsed the usage of nano as a standard prefix in 1960.

    When used as a prefix for something other than a unit of measure (as for example in words like "nanoscience"), nano refers to nanotechnology, or means "on a scale of nanometres". See nanoscopic scale.

    References

    Nano- Wikipedia
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