Nautical Miles to Nanometers (nmi to nm)

1 nautical mile equals 1,852,000,000,000 nanometers exactly.

1 nautical mile = 1,852,000,000,000 nanometers

How to convert nautical miles to nanometers

To convert nautical miles to nanometers, multiply the number of nautical miles by 1,852,000,000,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply nanometers by 5.399568035×10⁻¹³ (rounded).

nanometers = nautical miles × 1,852,000,000,000

Example: 10 nautical miles = 18,520,000,000,000 nanometers.

About these units

Nautical Mile (nmi)

NauticalCurrent unit

Exactly 1,852 meters, close to one minute of latitude. The standard unit of distance at sea and in aviation; one nautical mile per hour is one knot.

Sailors wanted a distance that matched their charts, so the nautical mile was tied to the globe itself: one minute of arc, one sixtieth of a degree, of latitude. Earth's polar circumference is therefore close to 21,600 nautical miles. Because Earth is flattened at the poles, a minute of latitude is about 1,843 meters at the equator and about 1,862 at the poles, so the fixed value of 1,852 meters is a compromise. France's definition of the meter produced a figure near 1,851.85 meters, which helped set the number.

The First International Extraordinary Hydrographic Conference in Monaco defined the international nautical mile as exactly 1,852 meters in 1929. The United States kept its own variant until 1954, and the United Kingdom adopted the international value in 1970. A speed of one nautical mile per hour is one knot. The unit is not part of SI but remains the norm in air, marine and space navigation and in defining territorial waters, because distances on a chart can be read straight off the latitude scale. Its symbols vary: NM, nmi and M all appear.

1 nautical mile = 1,852 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Nautical mile; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

Nanometer (nm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One billionth of a meter. Used for the wavelength of light (visible light is about 400–700 nm) and for chip feature sizes.

Greek for dwarf gave nano- its name, and the nanometer was once called something clumsier: the millimicrometre, or more often the millimicron, written mμ, since it is a thousandth of a micrometer. The prefix nano- was among those officially adopted when SI prefixes were first introduced in 1960, and the nanometer grew into the standard unit for optics and microelectronics. It sits a factor of ten above the older ångström, which is 0.1 nm and is still used for atomic distances.

Visible light spans roughly 400 to 700 nm, which is why color and spectroscopy are quoted this way. A helium atom is about 0.06 nm across and a ribosome about 20 nm. Chip makers have used nanometers since the late 1980s in names for manufacturing generations such as 32 nm and 22 nm. Those are labels for successive generations in the industry roadmap, and they describe typical feature sizes rather than one exact measurement. Readers should also beware that nm is sometimes written informally for the nautical mile.

1 nanometer = 1×10⁻⁹ meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Nanometre; Wikipedia: Metric prefix; Wikipedia: Nautical mile

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