Svedberg

Imagine you have a bunch of tiny particles floating around in water. These particles bump into each other and form bigger particles called proteins. The size of a protein can be measured using something called a svedberg unit.

Now, to understand svedberg units, let's pretend that you have a bunch of toy balls of different sizes in a container. You want to sort them by size, so you use a strainer with different sized holes. The smallest balls will fit through the smallest hole, but the bigger ones won't. You can then separate the balls into different piles based on which hole they fit through.

Similarly, scientists use something called a centrifuge to separate proteins based on their size. A centrifuge spins really fast, and the proteins will settle in different layers depending on their size. Smaller proteins will settle closer to the top, while larger proteins will settle at the bottom.

The svedberg unit measures how quickly a protein moves through the liquid in the centrifuge. Basically, the slower a protein moves, the bigger it is. The svedberg unit is named after a Swedish scientist named Theodor Svedberg who invented this method of measuring the size of proteins. So, the higher the svedberg number, the bigger the protein.