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What is nanoscale in nature?

Atoms, which are the basic building blocks of materials, are on the order of 0.1 to 0.5 nm in size.  Structures at the nanometer scale are therefore composed of relatively small groups of atoms. For example, the simple organic molecule shown in the figure below is composed of 8 carbon atoms (blue), 8 hydrogen atoms (white) and two sulphur atoms (yellow).  Biological systems utilize structures from the nanometer to micron scale.  A single turn of the DNA double helix is about 3.4 nanometers.  Proteins are on the order of 10 nanometers and cells are in the range of 10 microns.

                                                            Adapted from Slide by R. Bashir