April 28, 2010

Tipping the Scales

Powers of Ten from Heinz Legler on Vimeo.



A cool interactive take on the indelible 1968 Powers of Ten film (above) (or this a cheap, probably pretty expensive, Morgan Freeman-narrated knock-off). I've never actually heard anyone use the term "Yoctometer" but I support anyone wanting to.

It is an interesting fact that the divisions between different areas of science is based mainly on the scale they study. You could reasonably argue that everything important having to do with chemistry, for instance, takes place between roughly 10-7m and 10-9m. Counting molecular stuff, biology gets everything from the
10-7m to 1 m scale or so. Physics, of course, is everywhere...

The Scale of the Universe: