“Daddy, how big is the coronavirus?” During the first lockdown, my son was asking many questions about the pandemic. “Can we see it?” 

To answer this question, I used examples from around the home. I thought it best to start with millimetres (mm): an ant is on average 5mm long and the head of a pin is about 1-2mm wide. To go smaller, I tried to explain the nanoscale: the prefix “nano” means one-billionth of a metre or 10 to the power of 9. ..

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