Powers of Ten

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Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames.^[1] The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). The film is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke, and more recently is the basis of a new book version. Both adaptations, film and book, follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work.

In 1998, "Powers of Ten" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[edit] Narrative summary

The film begins with an overhead image of a man and woman reclining on a blanket; the view is that of one meter across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expository voiceover by Philip Morrison, then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across (or 10¹ m in standard form), revealing that the man is picnicking in a park with a female companion. The zoom-out continues (at a rate of one power of ten per 10 seconds), to a view of 100 meters (10² m), then 1 kilometer (10³ m), and so on, increasing the perspective—the picnic is revealed to be taking place in Burnham Park, near Soldier Field on Chicago's lakefront—and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of 10²⁴ meters, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in at a rate of a power of ten per 2 seconds to the picnic, and then slows back down to its original rate into the man's hand, to views of negative powers of ten—10⁻¹ m (10 centimeters), and so forth—until the camera comes to quarks in a proton of a carbon atom at 10⁻¹⁶ meter.

[edit] Errors, omissions, and commentary

There are some errors that occur at various points in the film. For instance, what is shown as one square meter 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).

In a less technical error, the narrator refers to Soldier Field as "Soldiers Field".

[edit] Related works

• There is also a 1982 book (revised 1994) 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.
• Cosmic Zoom (1968) by Eva Szasz and the National Film Board of Canada is also based on Boeke's Cosmic View.
• Cosmic Voyage (1996), [1] an IMAX film. (Credited as based on Boeke's Cosmic View without mention of the Eames' film.)

[edit] Pop culture references

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• Terry Pratchett's book The Bromeliad Trilogy: Wings (1990) begins with a mental exercise of zooming-in sequence, starting with the entire universe and focusing on a pair of eyes.^[2]
• Simply Atomic (1972), based upon an outre comic fanzine, has a theme similar to Powers of Ten.
• 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, Powers of Ten-style spoof.
• The opening of the film Contact is a Powers of Ten-style montage that takes the viewer from Earth to the edge of the universe before ultimately resolving into the pupil of the main character's eye.
• The opening scene was spoofed in the couch gag for The Simpsons episode, "The Ziff Who Came to Dinner" (going from 10²⁶ to 10⁻¹⁶ to Homer's head, to which Homer says, "Wow!"), and has been repeated twice with different dialogue on "On a Clear Day, I Can't See My Sister" (where Homer says, "Cool!" after the scene returns to the living room and Kang and Kodos can be heard laughing) and "Eternal Moonshine of the Simpson Mind" (where Homer says "Weird!" after the scene returns to the living room).
• An unreleased advertisement for Apple's Mac OS X 10.2, "Jaguar", is similar to Powers of Ten.^[3]
• In the Family Guy episode "Not All Dogs Go to Heaven", the final scene zooms out from Quahog, Rhode Island to show the Universe as a speck of dust on a lampshade in a live-action bedroom scene occupied by Adam West and Rob Lowe.
• For their Twisted Logic Tour in 2005-06, the band Coldplay used Powers of Ten as the backdrop for their performance of "The Scientist".
• Musician Shawn Lane has an album entitled Powers of Ten.
• In May 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.
• The film has inspired a science exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences, which was shown from June 1, 2002 to January 5, 2003.

[edit] See also

• Orders of magnitude (length)
• Earth's location in the universe
• J.T. Fraser, author of The Power of Time, the book on which the man at the picnic rests his left hand.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Powers of 10 at Youtube.com
• Exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences
• A website with a tutorial very similar to The Powers of Ten Note: Requires Java
• A Photograph version online Similar Photographs 1
• Powers of Ten at the Internet Movie Database
• Powers of 10 at The Universe-Solved! website
• A similar Flash, also using the title "Cosmic Zoom"

Coordinates: 41°51′53.93″N 87°36′48.21″W / 41.8649806°N 87.6133917°W / 41.8649806; -87.6133917