Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). The idea for the film appears to have come from the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke. IMB is an acronym for a neutrino observatory located under Lake Erie. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... For the album by Ash, see 1977 (album). ... Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to document reality. ... Charles Eames (June 17, 1907 – August 21, 1978) (pronounced ) was an American designer, architect and filmmaker who, together with his wife Ray, is responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century. ... Spatial scale provides a shorthand form for discussing relative lengths, areas, distances and sizes. ... The Universe is defined as the summation of all particles and energy that exist and the space-time in which all events occur. ... A logarithmic scale is a scale of measurement that uses the logarithm of a physical quantity instead of the quantity itself. ... An order of magnitude is the class of scale or magnitude of any amount, where each class contains values of a fixed ratio to the class preceding it. ... Cosmic View is an essay by Kees Boeke that combines text and graphics to explore many levels of size and structure, from the astronomically vast to the atomically tiny. ... Cornelis Boeke (1884 - 1966) studied at the University of London. ...

The film begins with an aerial image of a man reclining on a blanket; the view is that of one metre across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expository voiceover, then slowly zooms out to a view ten metres across ( or 10¹ m in standard form), revealing that the man is picnicking in a park with a female companion. The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 metres (10² m), then 1 kilometre (10³ m), and so on, increasing the perspective—the picnic is revealed to be taking place near Soldier Field on Chicago's lakefront—and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of 10²⁴ metres, 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^-1 m (10 centimetres), and so forth, until we are viewing a carbon nucleus inside the man's hand at a range of 10^-18 metre. The or meter (see spelling differences) is a measure of length. ... The term dramatic structure refers to the parts into which a short story, a novel, a play, a screenplay, or a narrative poem can be divided. ... VoiceOver is a feature built into Apple Computers Mac OS X v10. ... Standard Forms in mathematics assist people in identifying types of equations. ... Soldier Field is located on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, Illinois, and is currently home to the NFLs Chicago Bears. ... Nickname: Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Location in the Chicago metro area and Illinois Coordinates: Country United States State Illinois County Cook & DuPage Incorporated March 4, 1837 Government  - Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) Area  - City  234. ... A centimetre (American spelling centimeter, symbol cm) is a unit of length that is equal to one hundredth of a metre, the current SI base unit of length. ...

The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1998. The Library of Congress is the de facto national library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress. ... The National Film Registry is the registry of films selected by the United States National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. ...

Errors, omissions, and commentary

There are some errors that occur at various points in the film. For instance, what is shown as one square metre is actually somewhat more than that at times. When zooming out, the 10⁷ m rectangle fits snugly around the Earth, but the Earth should really be somewhat bigger (when zooming back in, it is shown correctly.) Adjectives: Terrestrial, Terran, Telluric, Tellurian, Earthly Atmosphere Surface pressure: 101. ...

The film is also limited to what was known at the time of its production: Quarks are mentioned merely as a question, even though the concept had been accepted by much of the scientific community for approximately a decade at the time. For other uses of this term, see: Quark (disambiguation) 1974 discovery photograph of a possible charmed baryon, now identified as the Σc++ In particle physics, the quarks are subatomic particles thought to be elemental and indivisible. ...

An interesting aspect mentioned by Robbert Dijkgraaf is that when one zooms out into the universe the scene viewed goes back in time (as a result of the visual delay of light travelling over great distances) and thus the farthest image of the whole universe, is really one of the universe at the "time" of the Big Bang, when it was infinitely small. In this sense, the two extremes of size come together. Robbert Dijkgraaf at Harvard University Robbert Dijkgraaf (1960) is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. ... According to the Big Bang model, the universe emerged from an extremely dense and hot state. ...

Related works and references in pop culture

There is also a 1982 book of the same title, by Philip Morrison and Phylis Morrison (Philip narrated the film). It contains a sequence of pictures starting with the universe and moving in powers of ten down to subatomic sizes. Philip Morrison, (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005), was institute Professor, Emeritus and Professor of Physics, Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). ... The Universe is defined as the summation of all particles and energy that exist and the space-time in which all events occur. ...

There are similar films called

• Cosmic Zoom (1968) which was based on an essay called Cosmic View.
• Simply Atomic (1972) based upon an outre comic fanzine.
• Cosmic Voyage (1996) [1] an IMAX film.

The film has inspired a science exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, which was shown from June 1, 2002 to January 5, 2003. Cosmic View is an essay by Kees Boeke that combines text and graphics to explore many levels of size and structure, from the astronomically vast to the atomically tiny. ... Cosmic Voyage is a 1996 short documentary produced in the IMAX format, directed by Bayley Silleck and narrated by Morgan Freeman. ... IMAX theatre at the Melbourne Museum complex, Australia BFI London IMAX by night IMAX dome in Guayaquil, Ecuador Glasgow Imax on the left (Part of the Glasgow Science Centre IMAX (short for Image Maximum) is a film format created by Canadas IMAX Corporation that has the capacity to display... The California Academy of Sciences is one of the ten largest natural history museums in the world. ... June 1 is the 152nd day of the year (153rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For album titles with the same name, see 2002 (album). ... January 5 is the 5th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The opening scene was spoofed in the Simpsons episode, "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner" (going from 10²⁶ to 10^-18 to Homer's head). The Simpsons. ... The Ziff Who Came to Dinner is the fourteenth episode of The Simpsons fifteenth season. ...

For their Twisted Logic Tour in 2005 and 2006, the band Coldplay used Powers of Ten as the backdrop for their performance of The Scientist. Twisted Logic redirects here. ... Coldplay is an English rock band from London. ... The Scientist is the second single from Coldplays sophomore album, A Rush Of Blood To The Head. ...

In May of 2006 at E3 and earlier at the 2005 GDCe, Will Wright mentioned that his most recent game title at that time, Spore, was partially inspired by Powers of Ten. E³ logo The Electronic Entertainment Expo, commonly known as E³, was an annual trade show for the computer and video games industry presented by the Entertainment Software Association. ... The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual gathering of video game developers. ... Will Wright (born January 20, 1960) is an American computer game designer and co-founder of the game development company, Maxis. ... Spore is a PC game under development by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. ...

At the ending of Men in Black, the camera pulls out showing that the universe is one of many marbles in an alien's bag, an intergalactic spoof of this. Men in Black is a 1997 science fiction comedy action film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith and Vincent DOnofrio. ...

Musician Shawn Lane has an album entitled "Powers of Ten". Shawn Lane (March 21, 1963 – September 26, 2003) was an American guitarist and composer. ...

Terry Pratchett's book The Bromeliad Trilogy: Wings from 1990 begins with a mental exercise of zooming-in sequence, starting with the entire universe and focusing on a pair of eyes. Excerpt from the book Terence David John Pratchett OBE (born April 28, 1948, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England[1]) is an English fantasy author, best known for his Discworld series. ...

See also

• Orders of magnitude (length)

Categories: | ...

External links

• Official website
• Exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences
• A website with a tutorial very similar to The Powers of Ten Note: Requires Java
• [2] XKCD spoof version, "Powers of One"
• A Photograph version online Similar Photographs 1 Similar Photographs 2
• Powers of Ten at the Internet Movie Database
• Cosmic Zoom at the Planetary Visions website
• A similar Flash, also using the title "Cosmic Zoom"
• "Simpsons" spoof version

Coordinates: 41°51′53.93″N, 87°36′48.21″W The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ... Map of Earth showing lines of latitude (horizontally) and longitude (vertically), Eckert VI projection; large version (pdf, 1. ...