At our scale, and for our perception, weak and strong interaction are not present. Everything is essentially described by gravity and EM interactions.
When moving to short scales, influence of gravity diminishes and then vanishes. This is what capillary length describes. Surface effects associated to chemistry becomes dominant in water behavior and for most objects in fact. Then brownian motion prevents small dust particles from falling. Van der waals force ensures universal and attractive interaction that ultimately oppose weight.
As capillary length is not much smaller than 1 mm, it is not a strict definition. But nanotechnologies are also loosely defined with things and aspects that are not clearly related together. Nanoparticles and RFID. NEMS and manipulation at molecular level. Nanotransistor and nanofluidics.
Advantage: it is a definition related to fundamental interactions and this has a pedagogical interest.
Opinion ?
It is an intersting idea. Many years ago I read an article where it was described that scientists tried to make a very small steam engine to compare the differences with macroscopic engines. The main observation was that friction and adhesion was much more important in the microscopic engine - in accrodance with your ideas.
You are correct to point out: "But nanotechnologies are also loosely defined with things and aspects that are not clearly related together."
And, the corollary of your observation is that few people care about "definitions" per se. If the physics/chemistry/technology is interesting, the definition is not particularly important. No?
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