3 ms·

There is a book from the 80ies/early 90ies "POWERS OF TEN: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe" by Philip & Phylis Morrison. That is exactly that

• mkl 4y ago
  It was also a 1977 short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0
  • euroderf 4y ago
    I suspect that Marshall McLuhan loved this film.
• mncharity 4y ago
  It's similar. There are several such continuous or 10x-stepped zooms, but a downside for education, is it's easy to lose context. Were viruses bigger or smaller than bacteria? Was Earth 10^6 or 10^7 m? Whereas, if you're asked say, how big is a glass of water, you're unlikely to say fingernail sized, or spread-arm sized - you've handled the item, and so now have a feel for how big they are. The 1000x chunking let's you leverage that. Once you've eaten red blood cell M&Ms, you know they are 10-ish..., err, ummm, not mm, not nm, so um. The Earth is a blue marble, so 10-ish..., err, mmm, not km, not Gm, so Mm. A downside of 1000x steps is objects can end up inconveniently sized. 2 um zooms as either 2 m or 2 mm, often inconveniently large/small. Different zooms are good for different things. The small toy car scaled nicely for making roads, vs the larger toy car with moving doors; the small doll scaled nicely for making rooms, vs the larger doll with brushable-not-painted hair. Here, the 1000x step zooms are good for remembering and interconnecting sizes, but for then playing, you'll often want some other zoom.