Its fairly common knowledge that nanotechnology is small. Very small to be precise. That's why it can help us in so many ways - it can be performing tasks without us even knowing it's there, such as fog free films on glasses. They can be seen to the naked eyed, but allow the eye to see through.

Nanotechnology deals with  materials at the level of molecules and atoms that are 1/1000th the width of a human hair - thats too small to be seen with microscopes found in most laboratorys!

What Is a Nanometer?
Nanotechnology is measured in nanometers(nm). A nanometer is:

- 1 billionth of a meter

- which is 1 millionth of a centimetre

- 1 hundred thousandth of a millimetre

That means to see a nanometre at a scale of 1cm you would have to zoom in a million times - now that's small!
For all of you still using imperial, a nanometer is 250 millionths of an inch.
It's hard to put into perspective but a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick

A nanometer was previously known as a millimicron.

A nanometer is also smaller than the size of a cell in your body. It is for that reason that a lot of research goes into uses in medicine as nanodevices someday may be small enough to interact with human genes and proteins.