Powers of Ten
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Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film which depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten.
It begins with a couple picnicking in a park; the view is that of one meter across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expositionary voiceover, then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across ( or 101m in standard form). The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 meters (102m), then 1 kilometer (103m), and so on, increasing the perspective - the picnic is revealed to be taking place near Chicago, Illinois's waterfront - and continuing to zoom out to a field of view is 1026 meters, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in to the picnic, and then to views of negative powers of ten - 10-1m (10 centimeters), and so forth, until we are viewing a carbon nucleus inside the man's hand at a range of 10-18 meters.
The idea for the film appears to have come from the 1957 book Cosmic View, by Kees Boeke.
It was written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
The film has inspired a science exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, which was shown from June 1, 2002 to January 5, 2003.
There is also a 1984 book of the same title, by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison; it contains a sequence of pictures starting with the universe and moving in powers of ten down to subatomic sizes.
See also orders of magnitude
External links
- Official website (http://www.powersof10.com/)
- Exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences (http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/powers_of_ten/)
- Boeke's book (http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview)