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A nanogram is a unit of measurement equal to one billionth of a gram, derived from the International System of Units. Mass and weight are often confused, but units expressing mass are more useful to science. A nanogram is used in scientific fields to measure extremely small amounts of matter.
A nanogram is a unit of measurement, abbreviated as “ng” which indicates a mass equal to one billionth, or 1/1,000,000,000, of a gram. This is obviously an extremely small amount and nanograms as the units are rarely used outside the scientific fields of microbiology, physics and chemistry. A nanogram is a unit derived from the International System of Units (SI), a system recognized by nearly every country in the world as the system by which consistent measurements can be made and communicated. The SI is closely related to and derived directly from the metric system.
Mass and weight are often confused, and the main reason for this is that in standard Earth gravity, an object’s mass and weight can be considered identical, and the terms are often used interchangeably. The two are not the same, however, since mass is a measure of the amount of matter in an object and weight is a measure of how strongly gravity attracts an object. Thus, at a lower than standard Earth’s gravity, an object retains the same mass, but when weighed on a traditional scale it weighs less than at standard gravity. For this reason, units of measurement that express the mass of an object are considered more useful to science. SI units of mass, such as the nanogram, are often misidentified as units of weight and while this is functionally correct on the Earth’s surface, it is not completely accurate.
To further understand the meaning of the SI base unit of mass, the kilogram, and by extension, divisions and multiples of this unit, it is necessary to know where this unit originates from. The kilogram is defined as the mass of 1,000 cubic centimeters of water. A gram, therefore, is the mass of one cubic centimeter of water. A nanogram, therefore, is a mass equivalent to one billionth of a cubic centimeter of water. This relationship can be tricky to express in this way, so a nanogram is sometimes expressed in scientific notation as a factor of a gram, and as such is written as 10-9 grams.
In some scientific fields, nanograms are often used as a unit of measurement. Extremely small amounts of matter can be measured in nanograms, and such small units can be encountered in some calculations in certain fields. Microbiologists can use nanograms to express the mass of extremely small biological units such as viruses. Modern drug testing techniques can detect drug concentrations in the nanogram range in hair samples. These are just a few of the many instances where nanograms can be used as a unit.
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