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Magnifying by Powers of Ten

Posted by Cliff on from the drill-down-from-macro-to-micro dept.

Ron Harwood observes: "Molecular Expressions at Florida State University has a view of Earth starting at 10 million light years and working it's way closer by "powers of ten" till you are at the smallest point scientists can go in the subatomic universe."

5 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wheee... by Zathrus · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sure I've seen it before

    Read the webpage. It's based off Dutch engineer and educator Kees Boeke Powers of Ten idea, which was later turned into a film by Charles and Ray Eames. You probably saw the film in grade school (in the US at least) or at some science/tech museum. It's a pretty popular piece.

    And yes, I thought the same thing. Until I read the webpage.

  2. Looks familiar ... by graf0z · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When i was a twelve year old schoolboy i read this book and was really fascinated. Same idea. /graf0z.

  3. Re:See the Eames version by DerekLyons · · Score: 2, Interesting
    The original Powers of Ten video (by Charles and Ray Eames) is still the definitive version. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes this web version.
    Sadly, that's not the original. The original was published in dead-tree form in Holland in 1957. The Eames video is based on that book. (The full history is near the bottom of the URL linked in the article.)
  4. Re:See the Eames version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    A book is a really low frame rate video

  5. Javascript Scale Model of the Solar System by spanklin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check out this link. A guy at the Exploratorium (the sysadmin?) wrote this page. You plug in how big you want the Sun to be (e.g., 1 inch diameter), and it gives you the scale of the sizes/orbital radii for the planets, the size of a light year, speed of light, and others. I used it in a talk I gave. If you make the Sun the size of a golf ball, Pluto is a grain of sand at the other end of an (American) football field, and the nearest star is another golfball 450+ miles away!