Here is original presentation about nanotechnology where Andrew Maynard from University of Michigan explained the concept using cooking analogy by actually making a cake. The video is ca. 17 minutes long, but if you don't have even that much time, go to ca. 10:25 to get the analogy, which in summary goes like this:

 

Same as in nanotech, where a matter of atomic scale is taken to create new material, cooking is a complex process of taking ingredients or raw materials, mixing them up and baking a final meal/cake which has attributes (shape, texture, smell,...) that none of the original ingredients have. The only difference between cooking and nanotech is that in cooking you can see the ingredients, in nanotech, you can't.

 

RNA is similar to DNA (they are both nucleic acids) but it has different purpose. And then there is RNAi (RNA interference) and in this video there is an interesting story how it was discovered.

If you want to understand these acronyms in layman terms, invest five minutes of your time in watching it, it is worth it.