nanometre
part of speech
noun (a nanometre, nanometres)
meaning for a pupil
A unit of length: one billionth of a metre (0.000000001 m). Symbol: nm. tree →
sense in the lessons
A science and maths word for very, very tiny things: atoms, molecules, viruses and the wavelength of light are measured in nanometres. Computer chips have parts only a few nanometres across. In maths: 1 metre = 1,000,000,000 nm; 1 millimetre = 1,000,000 nm.
examples
- A nanometre is a billion times smaller than a metre. tree →
- A human hair is about 80,000 nanometres wide. tree →
- Visible light has wavelengths of about 400 to 700 nanometres. tree →
- Some viruses are about 100 nanometres across. tree →
- Computer chips have tiny parts measured in nanometres. tree →
- Your fingernails grow about one nanometre every second. tree →
- We use nm as the symbol for nanometre. tree →
note
UK, Canada, Australia and NZ spelling "nanometre"; US spelling "nanometer". Symbol "nm" (not "nM", which is a chemistry unit). Prefix "nano-" means one billionth. In maths problems: divide nanometres by 1,000 to get micrometres, by 1,000,000 to get millimetres.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «nanometre» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.