Published: 24 April, 2009

Technology that uses very small building blocks

What is nanotechnology?

Nano comes from the greek word nanos, which means dwarf. In Spanish a "nano" is also the word for dwarf. So nanotechnology means technology that uses very small building blocks or technology that can be used to determine how such very small building blocks look or how they work. In engineering the length of objects are today usually measured in the metric system. One meter is about 40 inches. The metric system is a decimal system so 1/1000 of a meter is 0.001 meter, which is called a millimeter. 1/1000 of a millimeter is 0.000001 meter and is called a micrometer. Micro is actually greek for "small". Now 1/1000 of a micrometer is 0.000000001 meter and that is called a nanometer.

Nanotechnology in the strict sense deals with sizes and distances between 1 nanometer and 100 nanometer. The nanonotechnologists make such small objects and put them together to create new machines or they study small natural machines which work in the body. For example in your muscle, the force is produced by an army of molecular motors. Each of these move only a few nanometers in each step but all together they can make you jump really high.