'Nano' is a prefix (goes at the beginning of a word) and refers to a measurement of 10-9 or 0.000000001. 'Scale' in this context means length. The standard measure of length in science is in meters (m). One nanometer (1 nm) is equal to 10-9 m or 0.000000001 m. A nanometer is 10 times smaller than the width of your DNA, and 10 times bigger than the size of an atom. Even though nanoscale is very small, it is at least 109 or 1,000,000,000 times bigger than a quark. Quarks are really, really, really small.
Play Ushi's Ruler Game to get an idea of the size of different items or measure your height in How Tall Are You?
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| Quark 10-18 m |
Atom 10-10 m |
Water Molecule 10-9 m |
DNA 10-8 m |
| <10-9 nm | 0.1 nm | 1 nm | 10 nm |
| Smaller → | → | → | → Larger |