Sizing Things Down

, 5 minutes

Nano is the scientific term meaning one-billionth (1/1,000,000,000). It comes from a Greek word meaning “dwarf.”

A nanometer is one one-billionth of a meter. One inch equals 25.4 million nanometers. A sheet of paper is about 100,000 nanometers thick. A human hair measures roughly 50,000 to 100,000 nanometers across. Your fingernails grow one nanometer every second.
(Other units can also be divided by one billion. A single blink of an eye is about one-billionth of a decade. An eyeblink is to a year what a nanometer is to a yardstick.)

Nanoscale refers to measurements of 1 – 100 nanometers.  A virus is about 70 nm long. A cell membrane is about 9 nm thick. Ten hydrogen atoms are about 1 nm.
At the nanoscale, many common materials exhibit unusual properties, such as remarkably lower resistance to electricity, or faster chemical reactions.

Nanotechnology is the manipulation of material at the nanoscale to take advantage of these properties. This often means working with individual molecules.

Nanoscience, nanoengineering and other such terms refer to those activities applied to the nanoscale. “Nano,” by itself, is often used as short-hand to refer to any or all of these activities.

Things in the universe come in different sizes. One very small size is nanoscale. To learn about nanotechnology, it helps to understand the nanoscale, which is much smaller than anything you can see.
When dealing with very large or very small sizes, scientists often use scientific notation. The size is written as a number with an exponent. The exponent indicates a number of multiples of 10 and is called the order of magnitude. For example, 103 means 1,000, or 10x10x10. The order of magnitude is 3. The first number is multiplied by the exponent to get the size.
An object one order of magnitude larger than another is roughly ten times larger. For example, one foot equals 12 inches, or 1.2 x 101 inches. The exponent tells us to move the decimal point one place to the right. The Eiffel tower is 325 m tall, or 3.25 x 102 m, which is of order of magnitude 2 – it is roughly 2 orders of magnitude greater than a meter. Mount Everest is 8,848 m tall, or 8.848 x 103 m, order of magnitude 3.
Going in the other direction—measuring small things—we use negative numbers in the exponents. A negative exponent means “move the decimal point this many places to the left. A silver atom is 0.000000000165 m wide, or 1.65 x 10-10 m, order of magnitude -10. A hydrogen atom is 0.000000000025 m wide, 2.5 x 10-11 m, order of magnitude -11.
The numbers on the cards in the deck describe the order of magnitude of the different objects' length in meters. Objects marked with a –9 are between 1-9 nm.
All the images in the deck are legally used, either from www.clipart.com or from Wikimedia Commons. The diamond photo requires credit: Wikimedia user Saperaud.

Invite visitors to play the game.

Explain the rules, then deal a hand and guide them through play. If possible, avoid playing the game yourself to avoid beating the visitor. (Alternately, if you play with visitors, try to lose on purpose.)

Each player is dealt 5 cards, and 3 cards are dealt face up on the table, starting 3 columns of play.

Each card has a number on it to tell you how small or large the object is. Positive numbers are large – the bigger the number, the bigger the object. Negative numbers are small – the smaller (more negative) the number, the smaller the object.

Each player, in turn, places one card above or below one of the columns. A card may be placed above a column if the value on the card is greater than the value of the card at the top of the column. Likewise, a card may be placed below a column if the value on the card is smaller than the value of the card at the bottom of the column. Cards may not be played if they are identical in rank to the end of the column.

Cards may not be played in the middle of a column, only on the ends.

Whoever gets rid of all their cards first wins!

After each group of visitors, leave the last hand played out on the table. The cards and pictures will attract the attention of your next group. Use the last hand’s cards to explain the game, and then deal a new hand for the new group.

Add more columns if you have more players. Roughly, have as many columns as you have players. With more players, more columns give everyone more chances to play. If everyone is blocked and can't play another card, start another column.

Every time a visitor plays a card, say out loud the comparison they just made. "A blue whale is bigger than a breadbox" or "A neutron is smaller than Jupiter." For extra learning, point out the approximate size difference.

Each number in the game is 10 times bigger or smaller than the next number. So, for example, a hurricane (+5) is about ten times larger than Rhode Island (+4). The sun (+9) is about a thousand times larger than the Earth (+6). Paris (+3) is about one million times larger than a pea (-3).

At the end of the game, you can challenge visitors to find comparable analogies of sizes. For instance, the Sun is 100 times bigger than Earth. Ebola is 100 times larger than DNA. Paris is 6 orders (one million times) larger than a pea. Are there two other things 6 orders apart? (Like the analogies section on the SAT: Paris is to pea as ? is to ? )

If younger players have trouble with negative numbers, point to the number line on the rules sign. Explain how –7 is smaller than –3, even though +7 is bigger than +3.

At the end of the game, you can point out the tools on the corners of the cards. Some objects are so small, or so far away, that we need special equipment to see them. Others are visible with just our eyes.

Print the cards out on heavy cardstock, or even better - "brochure paper". Light can shine through ordinary copy paper, and we don't want cheating.

Stickers that say “This is made of atoms.” are a great prize for winning.

This game could be used as a classroom activity, by playing multiple rounds.

This deck could also be played as a memory game, with any two cards of the same size matching. (This would require removing the few cards which have no match, and removing cards to create an even number of each size.)

“Golf” rules are an interesting alternative game to try with this deck, but don’t include ordered lines of objects: http://www.pagat.com/draw/golf.html

Adjusting the game to require playing objects with adjacent sizes just doesn't work. There are way too many different sizes in the deck.

What about quarks, electrons, strings, etc.?

The size of these particles is unclear. Electrons and quarks are, at most, 10-18 meters across. However, it is suspected that their actual diameter is much smaller, and that they may possibly be point particles. This game stops at nuclear particles because their diameters have been measured definitively.

If string theory is correct, space is quantized at 10-35 m, the size of a string. However, absolutely no experimental evidence exists to support string theory.

What is a…?

Here is a list of all the objects in the game, their order of magnitude, their exact sizes (or average size), and what they are (see downloadable materials for a cleaner table):

Object OM Size Description
The Universe 26 1.37 x1026 m Everything
Milky Way galaxy 20 9.46 ×1020 m Giant swarm of stars
Eagle nebula 17 6.62 x1017 m Big patch of gas turning into stars
Black hole 11 5 x1011 m The suckiest thing in the universe
Red giant star 10 3 x1010 m A large star
Sun 9 1.39 x109 m Our nearest star – a medium star
Jupiter 8 1.42 x108 m Big ball of gas not turning into a star
Saturn 8 1.2 x108 m Ring around the planet
Venus 7 1.21 x107 m Hot planet
Earth 7 1.27 x107 m Where you live
USA 6 4.6 x106 m A country in North America
Moon 6 3.48 x106 m Big gray rock orbiting the Earth.
Australia 6 4 x106 m Island, nation, continent: Three in one!
England 5 9.6 x105 m A country in Europe
Hurricane 5 1.6 x105 m A big storm
Oahu 4 7.1 x104 m Island in Hawaii
Rhode Island 4 7.7 x104 m One of the United States
Mt. Everest 3 8.84 x103 m Tallest mountain on Earth
Paris 3 9 x103 m City in France
Eiffel Tower 2 3.24 x102 m Building in Paris
Redwood 2 1.15 x102 m Tallest tree
Submarine 2 1.3 x102 m One ping
Cemetery 2 3 x102 m I see dead people
Cruise ship 2 8 x102 m A three hour tour
Statue of Liberty 1 9.3 x101 m Statue in New York
Blue whale 1 3 x101 m Largest animal
School 1 4 x101 m House of learning
Locomotive 1 2.4 x101 m Steamy mode of transportation
Tree 1 1.2 x101 m Green plant good for climbing
Bicycle 0 1.2 x100 m Personal mode of transportation
Nun 0 1.6 x100 m Member of religious order
Pirate 0 1.8 x100 m Arrr, matey
Lawyer 0 1.8 x100 m Insert favorite joke here
Chicken -1 5 x10-1 m Does this come before the omelette?
Pop can -1 1.3 x10-1 m Also known as soda can
Soccer ball -1 2.2 x10-1 m In Europe, known as football
Omelette -1 1.7 x10-1 m You have to break some eggs
Breadbox -1 3 x10-1 m Many things are bigger than this
Card -2 9 x10-2 m CARD: Card as recursion device
Paper clip -2 4 x10-2 m It looks like you're learning a demo!
Stamp -2 3 x10-2 m Return to sender
Nutshell -2 4 x10-2 m Contains protein, may cause allergies
Quarter -2 2.42 x10-2 m American coin
Diamond -3 3 x10-3 m Hardest stuff on Earth
Raindrop -3 4 x10-3 m They keep falling on my head
Pea -3 6.3 x10-3 m This size is out of the pod
Ant -3 5 x10-3 m Insect smaller than my uncle
Grain of sand -4 3 x10-4 m Tiny rock
Dust mite -4 1.25 x10-4 m Arachnid that eats flakes of dead skin
Paramecium -4 2 x10-4 m One-celled creature, often found in water, with many tiny hairs for moving
Amoeba -4 5 x10-4 m One-celled creature that moves by distorting itself
Euglena -5 5 x10-5 m A microscopic water creature that moves with a single flaggelum
Pollen -5 4 x10-5 m Flowers reproduce by spreading pollen, which fertilizes other flowers
Dust mite poop -5 1.7 x10-5 m Tiny feces, seen on the card on a fiber from pillow stuffing.
Red blood cell -6 7 x10-6 m Carries oxygen to our bodies from our lungs
E. coli -6 5 x10-6 m A bacteria normally found in our intestines. Some varieties make people very sick.
Yeast -6 3.5 x10-6 m A fungus that eats sugar and poops alcohol. Its farts make bread rise.
Ebola -7 6 x10-7 m Virus which causes a bleeding disease
Transistor -7 1 x10-7 m A single switch inside a computer chip
Chromosome -7 1 x10-7 m Units of DNA found in cells
Ribosome -8 2 x10-8 m Part of a cell, which helps construct proteins or copy DNA
HIV -8 8 x10-8 m The virus which causes AIDS
Cold virus -8 3 x10-8 m No cure has yet been found
DNA -9 2 x10-9 m Genetic code present in all life
Cholesterol molecule -9 1.6 x10-9 m You can never have just one
Buckyball -9 1 x10-9 m A molecule of 60 carbon atoms, shaped like a soccer ball. It can be used as a very low friction lubricant.
Lead atom -10 1.8 x10-10 m Element #82
Iron atom -10 1.4 x10-10 m Element #26
Silver atom -10 1.5 x10-10 m Element #47
Water molecule -11 9 x10-11 m H2O
Carbon atom -11 7 x10-11 m Element #6
Hydrogen atom -11 2.5 x10-11 m 1 proton, 1 electron
Gold nucleus -14 1.3 x10-14 m 79 protons and 117 neutrons
Radon nucleus -14 1.4 x10-14 m 86 protons and 136 neutrons
Uranium nucleus -14 1.6 x10-14 m 92 protons and 146 neutrons
Helium nucleus -15 4 x10-15 m 2 protons and 2 neutrons
Neutron -15 1.65 x10-15 m Sub-atomic nuclear particle
Proton -15 1.65 x10-15 m Sub-atomic nuclear particle

What do those colored circles in the corners mean?
The colored circles provide an index for the relative range of the objects beyond the specific order of magnitude. From red to violet, they're intended to help organize the many objects of the universe.

They also are pictures of what technology you need to see the various objects. The tools are:
Red - satellite
Orange - optical telescope
Yellow - naked eye
Green - optical microscope
Blue - scanning electron microscope
Purple - atomic force microscope
White - particle collider

A great journey down the scales of the universe:
http://www.nikon.com/about/feelnikon/universcale/index.htm
Another exploration of lots of objects of different sizes:
http://www.nanomission.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategor...
Nanoreisen: A journey through 3 different objects. In German, English, French and Spanish.
http://www.nanoreisen.de/
Orders of Magnitude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28length%29
Two books that explore this topic, by Robert Wells:
Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?
http://www.powells.com/biblio/61-9780807536551-0
What’s Smaller Than a Pygmy Shrew?
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=72-9780807588376-0
For more advanced students in middle school or above, Northwestern University has an excellent game (which inspired this one).
http://www.nanoed.org/concepts_apps/nanocos/
This game is also slightly based on "In a Pickle", by Gamewright:
http://www.gamewright.com/gamewright/index.php?page=game&section=games&s...

Put the cards away.

The following features of the program's design make it accessible

To give an inclusive presentation of this program

Say every size comparison aloud. A blue whale is bigger than a breadbox. A ribosome is smaller than a red giant star, etc.