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Java Powers of Ten 168

Posted by chrisd from the the-eames'-would-be-proud dept.
WeeMan writes "Remember that cool video/film you might have seen in your high school science class "Powers of Ten"? Well Florida State University (FSU) has their own well done Java version of Powers of Ten. For those who have not seen it, basically it's a continuous zooming in of images by powers of ten, starting with galactic superclusters/walls and ending at the quantum scale. The FSU site also has some cool close up images of many chip designs here, Java virtual microscopy there, and plenty of other cool applets and microscopy images (like microscopic images of beer from around the world : )"
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Java Powers of Ten More

Java Powers of Ten

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  • Ah, the days of middle school science... (Score:3, Funny)

    by eric434 ( 161022 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @11:50PM (#3671281) Homepage
    Heh, I want to see the "powers of ten" movie centered on a nude sunbather... :) (Hey, this is Slashdot..)

    But yeah, I remember the movie. IIRC it held the record for "longest contiunous zoom" or something...

  • How...? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by joeytsai ( 49613 )
    I've always wondered, how do they get pictures millions of light years away from the Milky Way? Or even pictures of the Milky Way, for that matter? Obviously no terran space vessel could have taken it...
    • Its Computer generated!

    • Re:How...? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Restil ( 31903 )
      Funny thing is, we don't really know what the milky way looks like from a distance. For the most part we make assumptions based on the structure of our galaxy compared to others that we CAN see. However, there is still much a lot of leeway in how the actual shape might turn out to be someday when technology is capable of making a more accurate ascertation.

      Also, don't forget, but we can only see a fraction of our own galaxy, and a large swath of the universe can't be observed either since our own galaxy is so dense that the center of the galaxy blocks our view to the other side. Its only pure luck that we're located so close to the edge of the galaxy that we're able to see out at all.

      -Restil

    • Re:How...? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Atzanteol ( 99067 )
      Short answer: We don't

      Long answer: Would you really know if they were 'faking' it or not? They probably used images of other galaxies in substitution for our own.

  • A couple more pics... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danamania ( 540950 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @11:56PM (#3671300)
    Some more microscopy pics of chips, concentrating on some of the funny things designers put on their layouts is at Silicon Zoo [fsu.edu]. Cartoon characters, signs, messages and a marriage dedication... :)

    a grrl & her server [danamania.com]

  • Original Power of Ten (Score:5, Informative)

    by JoeF ( 6782 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @11:58PM (#3671305)
    The Power of Ten video is the work of the late artists Charles and Ray Eames. It is available from the Eames Office [eamesoffice.com].

  • Hot damn, a java slideshow!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is truly hot stuff!!! a java slideshow of pictures!! Forget e-trading and dot-com fakes. Let's not talk about developing programs or new fancy hardware.. no..
    Stop the press!! there's a,,, GAAAASP,, java SLIDESHOW out on the web now. Holy cow!
    It feels good to be part of the elite that gets this kind of information to discuss!

  • Flamebait. (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 )
    Mark me as flamebait, but if this were done in flash, would it really be any different? It's just a series of still images...

    I don't care, my karma is fine. I'm waving the bird at you.

    • Re: Flamebait. (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 )


      > Mark me as flamebait, but if this were done in flash, would it really be any different? It's just a series of still images...

      Yeah, if they wanted to show off their geekiness they should have converted it to powers of two instead.

    • I kinda agree with you here. It could even had been done as a monumental animated gif, a QT movie or a Real video.

      What's cool about using Java is that unless you are on vanilla XP (without downloading Sun VM), you are able to see the video on many platforms (GIF is non-free too.)

      PPA, the girl next door.
    • if this were done in flash, would it really be any different?

      Dude. This is Java. Java makes CEOs nut in their pants. Flash does not have this effect.
    • I agree. This applet is so.... 1998.

    • Don't you know? Slashdot crowd hates Flash!

      I actually think it could have been done better in Flash, with a continous zoom and cross-fades to enhance the feeling.
    • It's not the actual technology behind it that's important, rather what the applet shows... At least it makes me think about the vastness of our universe.
      A wonderful piece of art imho...
    • Mark me as flaimbait, but have you noticed that starting your post "Mark me as flaimbait" always prevents that from happening and usually will get you modded up. Mark me as flaimbait, I don't care. This seems to be true. Mark this as offtopic too. I don't care. Mod me down see if I care. I got lots of karma.

  • wish I could zoom out more (Score:3, Funny)

    by GoatPigSheep ( 525460 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @12:08AM (#3671332) Homepage Journal
    I was hoping I would be able to zoom out untill I saw the creation of the universe... but I suppose you cant have everything in life.

  • Code Bloat in Powers of Ten (Score:3, Funny)

    by friscolr ( 124774 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @12:10AM (#3671336) Homepage
    well, you did say Java, didn't you?
  • My eighth grade science teacher showed us that movie weekly and I never got tired of it. I think I need my own copy...
    • I think I need my own copy...

      My thought exactly. But, is it worth the $25 for the dvd? (you can follow the link to powersof10.com to buy it.)

      • They have a copy at the local library here. I like to take it out once in a while, usually scooping the book(SciAm edition) with it. Definitely worth the walk down to the library, whereas the java applet sure ain't nothing to wait for.

        I always liked the Eames' film. I find it comforting, while some people I know have found it to be a bit unerving(I think for them it's a bit like a feeling of vertigo). For people who have never given much thought to these ideas it's maybe like getting thrown into the deep end. I remember going through the book version with a friend and she insisted on going one step at a time. She needed enough time to digest the information and let it sink in. So we started at the middle and worked or way to either end one page getting turned each day. It was a very nice contemplative experience.

        Personally, I find it provides a much needed reality check; it enhances my sense of place and perspective. And I can sure use that somedays.

  • hmmm.. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by saviorsloth ( 467974 )
    this just makes me think about zooming in on things, and if it's technically possible (not today) to take a photo of say that tree and magnify it to see the structure of things inside it... i dunno, like a 200 gigapixel camera or something.
    just a thought

    • Re:hmmm.. (Score:3, Informative)

      by io333 ( 574963 )
      The absolute resolution of any optical system, be it a common microscope, or a super yet to be invented CCD, is limited to half the wavelength of the visible light being used. Obviously deep violet light gives the maximum resolution. The electron microscope was a fantastic breakthrough because it could discern features much smaller than half the wavelength of violet light. That also explains why pictures taken with an electron microscope are always black and white (or colorized): there is no actual "light" there at all to give the object color. Below a certain size, color is impossible.

      Here's a page giving the simple formulas, as well as an automatic calculator:

      http://www.microscopyu.com/tutorials/flash/pixel ca lc/

      • The absolute resolution of any optical system, be it a common microscope, or a super yet to be invented CCD, is limited to half the wavelength of the visible light being used. Obviously deep violet light gives the maximum resolution.

        For, any optical system using visible light, of course. Colors exist outside visible light, they just aren't visible to the unassisted eye.

  • Fosters (Score:3, Funny)

    by ObviousGuy ( 578567 ) <ObviousGuy@hotmail.com> on Monday June 10, 2002 @12:19AM (#3671364) Homepage Journal
    It's Australian [fsu.edu] for Russian cubism [ibiblio.org], mate!

  • What about the transition defects? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by E-prospero ( 30242 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @12:30AM (#3671384) Homepage
    Well, it has a full set of images over a logarithmic range, but I'm not sure I'd say its well done. It's really just a slide show with a Powerpoint-esque transition effect.

    There are a number of slides that are quite bad transitions. Look at the 1 nanometer->1 angstrom transition. The 1 angstrom image bears no resemblance to the 1 nm image; the corners of the "zoom" rectangle from one image should correspond to the outer corners on the next image. Similar problems exist throughout the slides in space.

    As I recall, one of the beautiful things with the movie is that the transitions are seamless; the zoom out was continuous, and you never really got the impression that the images must have been from different sources

    Russ %-)
    • Agreed, although they make some (lame) argument in the web site notes about "visual impact" and such.

      But they could have done the transitions as a smooth zoom of the whole image if they'd chosen images to avoid the abrupt jumps like that. What would be really cool would be something like this but with a slider control so you could do fractional powers of ten and zoom in or out at your own speed.
    • The cool thing is that it's interactive. I sat my 5-year-old down in front of it, and she really liked being able to click on the buttons to zoom in and out. We could stop and talk for a while about images that she wanted to know more about, and she could click rapidly through some other ones.

      I show the Powers of 10 video every time I teach astronomy, but I'm not generally a big fan of videos for education, precisely because of the noninteractivity. There's a big difference between passive entertainment and active education. That's why I can't stand TV news -- damn it, I can't turn the page when I want to!

    • Yeah and they didn't zoom out far enough to show that the universe is really just sitting on the back of a much larger turtle. :)
  • i read the faq from the link sites provided by WeeMan. i probably miss it. anyway, why somebody want to do it? it looks fun, i agree. other than that?

  • How can you actually "see" stuff at quantum scale? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dido ( 9125 ) <dido@NoSpAM.imperium.ph> on Monday June 10, 2002 @01:13AM (#3671467)

    The short answer is, I guess, you can't. Quantum objects like molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles will always be "invisible", as they are all much, much smaller than a wavelength of visible light, which is what we really define vision as. We can really only infer their existence from their indirect effects, which is the only way we know any of them are real. Besides, to actually "see" anything amounts to measuring the position and velocity of an object to as high an accuracy as the size of the object, so the Heisenberg uncertainty principle makes it impossible to see anything so small...

    An attempt to actually zoom into a proton to see it using high-energy gamma ray photons would require a photon wavelength of less than 1 fm, or about 10^23 Hz. This gives a photon energy of roughly 2.5 GeV, which is comparable to the energies generated at the Fermilab or CERN particle accelerators. I guess this is probably enough energy to turn the proton into something else entirely even before you could see it. A similar attempt to view an atom would require a photon wavelength of 1 angstrom, a wavelength of about 10^18 Hz, and a photon energy of about 12 keV, quite enough to completely ionize the atom and strip away all of its electrons, leaving you with nothing to see. A similar calculation for the DNA strands at 10^-9 m gives an approximately 124 eV photon energy, which is also sufficient to ionize some of the molecules; you may be able to get a picture, but it will be a very hazy one (the best electron microscopy has been able to just barely make out the double helix structure of DNA).

    • For example, we can't see IR light, it's too low frequency. None the less, you can get scopes that will translate it into something you can see.

      So yes, in the strict sense you can't "see" an atom, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a way to visualize one.
      • but as he said, you need an insanely high powered "torch", which would destroy what you were measuring (well change it anyway)
        • > but as he said, you need an insanely high powered "torch", which would destroy what you were measuring (well change it anyway)...

          You're right, of course, but in the breaking of it you can figure out what state it was in to begin with. When you use enough power to blow off the electron cloud, you can measure what got blown off and bust out a computer to figure out the most likely state of affairs before you turned on the "lights". The same goes for demolishing subatomic particles. There's no way to "see" them without breaking them, but you can get a fairly accurate guess by watching how the pieces fly apart.

          Virg
    • http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/physics_division/GeV/ Pac18_meziani.pdf

      If i read this correctly, they CAN.
      • That makes one of us, becuase I can't read that link at all!

        (sure you posted it right?)

      • Re:CEBAF (Score:1)

        by t ( 8386 )
        There is nothing wrong with the link. For the 1 millionth time for all you lamers out there, /. in an effort to shut the stupid page-widening trolls up inserts spaces into long pieces of text such as urls. Read the FAQ if you are still clueless.

        t.


    • Lets get down to brass tacks- this is an exercise in conceptual visualization. It's not actually what you see, but if you were 1 angstrom tall and the laws of physics were suspended, you would see this...

      This is ever so important for high school and even college physics/engineering students. They might say "So what if my answer is off by a factor of 10? or a couple of factors of 10?"
      This is an easy visualization between 10^25 and 10^15. When you were in high school could you grok Avogadro's number? I know I sure couldn't!

      P.S.- if that "you should write your numbers in hex!" guy responds to this it's blood wars.
  • well, ok.. to nitpick.

    Two things.

    First of all, they could have started further out than just the milky way galaxy. They should have presented the top level as the entire known universe and worked inward from there. Several orders of magnitude gone to waste on that one.

    Second nitpick, 10 billion and 100 billion km don't match up. They don't zoom in by a factor of 10.

    Third minor nitpick. The 10 light years zoom has too many stars. Perhaps they're simply showing background stars, but if that were the case, there would be background stars all the way up until the point that earth fully engulfed the frame. Still, only a minor nitpick. :)

    -Restil
  • I seem to recall seeing something very similar, but done as a (realistic) cartoon animation. The part that sticks in my mind (I'm a biologist) was that it zoomed in to a kid fishing in a boat on a lake, then on a mosquito on his hand, then down the mosquito's proboscis into his blood.

    I'm not sure, but it may have been a Canadian production. Anybody else remember this?

    • That was in fact a Canadian production, sponsored by the National Film Board of Canada I believe. The piece was titled "Cosmic Zoom" I think and if I remember right it was made in the early 70's. I believe this predates the "Powers of 10" film this discussion is about. The kid in the fishing boat was actual film, and was combined with the cartoon imagery. For trivia's sake, the kid in the boat was on the Ottawa River, just behind the Canadian parliament buildings in Ottawa. I also seem to recall that the outward zoom went out past galactic clusters and superclusters.
  • I want to set the focus where to zoom in, not always in the center, like on a electronic street map. Now that would be something really revolutionary! Discover the whole universe while sitting at home drinking a beer.

  • This is a hoax, stupid ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @02:08AM (#3671570)
    This is an insult to the slashdot community ! Can you think two seconds before posting ?

    The idea of an alien guy pointing a camera to a tiny litle planet 10 million lightyears away, and still managing to aim at ground (25 pc of the earth surface), on a living organism, is simply ridiculous. For me, all remaining credibility was lost when a well centered quark appeared on the screen.

    Also, how could this guy be thinking in decimal system like us ? He probably thinks in base e or in base fibonacci !

    More so, if we suppose that this altruistic guy sends it to earth via radio waves (oh no, I forget, he probably aims a "L.A.S.E.R" to us too !), it would have to travel for 10e6 years before reaching a LISTENING receiver. And last time I checked, SETI didn't find anything.

    Get a clue !
  • If you look at 1x10^(15, 16, 17, 18) they look the same and in many other frames the stars look the same. However those stars could be so far away that even if you zoomed in they don't move. I know that it would be very difficult to photograph ourselves from that far out so those frames could be conceptual instead of actual. It still looks great though, and I always appreciate efforts to educate science over the web.
  • ...that zoomed in on a globe (Planet Earth)

    ...then zoomed in on a country

    ...then zoomed in on a hill

    ...then zoomed in on a house

    ...then zoomed in on a window on the house

    ...then zoomed in on desk inside the window

    ...then zoomed in on a globe on the desk

    ...and then started all over again, with the globe of course being Planet Earth where the animation had started. :)

    I've always thought it would make a cool screen saver but I can't find it anywhere :(
    • There was a Guinness TV ad in Ireland/UK a few years ago with a similar idea, where you zoom in on the Guinness, then into the bubbles which are little universes etc etc until you're back in front of the pint. They played Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" over it. Very touching.
  • http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/micro/gallery/computer s/computer.html (Bon Jovi piracy?)
  • Guitar music for guitarists. This is an outstanding album by Shawn Lane, technically speaking.

    http://www.xtrememusician.com/info/artists/album s/ 715.html

    Yann
  • It really ends with a molecular model, things this small really cannot be seen as the nature of photons become a limiting facotr.
  • Well, that was fun! And also, they use the metric system! I'm so glad.. I also noticed that Star Trek uses the metric system too. Maybe there's still hope for America? :)
    • As an American, I really, really hope that someday we will go to metric. It is so much better than what we use. To this day, I don't really understand why we are stuck with this much harder to understand system. A simple example:

      How many inches in a mile? Requires thought (plus you need to figure out what KIND of mile. Yes, there is more than one).

      How many centemeters in a kilometer? Requires about 3 seconds to figure out.

      Seriously, it is time to convert over.

  • A lot of credit belongs to Kees Boeke (Score:3, Informative)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @07:05AM (#3672062) Homepage
    OK, but let's credit the person who, I think, really originated the idea. When I was a kid, I was given a wonderful book called "Cosmic View: The Universe in Forty Jumps," by a Dutch schoolteacher named Kees Boeke. It was all drawings, with that wonderful Dutch surrealistic sense of humor--it is centered on a school courtyard in The Netherlands, which just happens to have a dead whale lying in it.

    It came out in 1957.

    There's really no question, the Eames movie and Morrison book are a "remake" of "Cosmic View." The film and book explicitly give credit to Boeke.

    To my astonishment, I find that the book is available online at

    http://www.vendian.org/mncharity/cosmicview/

    • Thank you so much, I've been looking for this reference for years!

      When I first saw stills from the Eames and Morrison work, I kept looking for the girl in the chair holding a cat with a little bit of salt left on her hand from lunch, that the ant was getting ready to feast on.

      I had encountered the book at a pubic library 25+ years ago and have been trying to get a copy of it for years, but could never remember the title or author.

      I really enjoy Boeke's bemused captions to his drawings.
    • "Waaagh! Who am I? What's my purpose in life? Calm down, get a grip now ..ooh, this is an interesting sensation!..."



      "...so many things to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation ... or is it the wind? Hey' there really is a lot of that now, isn't there? And what's this thing coming up at me very, very fast, so big, and wide, it needs a big, wide sort of name like wow -- rou -- round -- Ground! That's it! GROUND! ... I wonder if it'll be friends with me?"

  • Sure, I remember that film. It's the one where the camera travels across the galaxy in a couple of seconds, and then zooms out to show you the structure of the universe, right? I would like a camera like that -- one that could move many (thousand) orders of magnitude faster than the speed of light... !
  • This reminds me of the start of Contact [imdb.com]. Although it stops halfway, it had a _much_ higher resolution, especially if viewed at a 70mm theater.
  • Well actually I don't recommend it, because it can cause your brain to implode.

    At New York's Museum of Nat'l History there is an exhibit centered around a two-story-tall sphere. Around the sphere is a walkway with exhibits where they compare various sizes to the sphere.

    At first, it's like the Total Perspective Vortex. They'll say things like (paraphrased) "If the sphere is the size of the known universe, then this teeny tiny speck is the galaxy you live in."

    If you survive that, they get closer and closer to 1:1 size, then they move inwards and say things like "If the sphere is the size of a hydrogen atom, this speck is the size of the nucleus."

    It was at that point that I realized that matter truly does equal energy, and that even matter is mostly empty space, but nanoseconds later my brain imploded. I now drive a bus for a living and talk quietly to myself. Perhaps you've seen me or many of my other museum visitors. This helps to explain why there are so many weirdos in NYC. It's not that they're mentally ill or homeless. It's just that they've been through the exhibit.
  • Um...the images for 100 light years on down to 1 trillion kilometers (sequence of 4 images) are all the same image!

    I suppose not much was lost, as there really isn't much IN this range, but I was at least expecting to see some representation of the Oort cloud.

    Oh well.
  • In a programming language! On a computer! Quick, make sure everyone on slashdot hits this server, so they can see this wonderous invention!

    What next, devices to see this in color? With lowercase letters? Input without punchcards?

    Jeesh, a programming language is JUST A TOOL.

    -Donut
  • In the back of my mind I have sort of looked for a book that goes through the powers of 10. Can any one suggest any such books?
    C
  • My first impression was that the 'powers of 10' was going to be about how code size keeps increasing to perform the same function.

    It was the 'java' tag that did it...
  • There are no shortage of precedents for Eames "Powers of 10" which was made in 1977.

    The earliest is the other poster's mention of the Dutch teacher Kees Boeke's book from the 50's.

    Every time I went to the Ontario Science Center [ontariosciencecentre.ca] starting when it opened in 1969 my favourite exhibition was a powers of 10 film that started at a man sleeping in a park beside an airport (plane on the right) and zoomed out to the universe then stopped and did an accelerated zoom back down (vertigo anyone?) until it reached the man and then did the slow zoom down to the "unimaginably dense nucleus of a a carbon atom".

  • Remember that cool video/film you might have seen in your high school science class "Powers of Ten"?

    omg, this has to be one of the geekiest statements ever said ever.
    when i was in highschool we HATED that video. even the teacher!
    i tip my hat to you, i will forever be in awe of your infinite geekiness before which mine whimpers and tries to run away.

    unbelievable. seriously.

    • Wow. Your high school was weird. Our class (and teacher) loved the video. On one of the last days of school, we needed something to do and voted to watch it again.
  • Am I the only guy who thought it was going to zoom in on Disneyworld?

  • (I'm serious about this). Start at the most zoomed in state. Then run auto, and have it go backwards towards the "bigger picture". Now concentrate.

    As you see the houses, neighborhood, country and planet imagine us at each others' throats, beating and killing our fellow humans. Imagine the armies and tanks assembling; the rockets launching, the nukes exploding; and all the destructive and malicious things we fire at each other. Think of all the crap that's floating in the air, and the disappearing plants and forests and fish, while the greedy sneers on our faces grow wider as that meaningless electronic blip on the monitor goes up, up, up.

    Realize that right now we have the knowledge and the means, more than ever before, to help our fellow humans and to not screw up the spinning chunk of rock and water and the delicately balanced system that sustains all life.

    As you see the solar system, the galaxy, and finally nothing but the stars reflect on just how utterly stupid all the ill on earth is.

    Just think how dumb we're going to look when the aliens find us later, dead and rotting on our own filthy mess of a planet with our cold apelike hands still wrapped around each others' throats.

    • "...when the aliens find us later, dead and rotting on our own filthy mess of a planet with our cold apelike hands still wrapped around each others' throats...." nah, we'll just be dust, blowing in the wind. Nothing we do is going to stop us being dead one day - that's perspective.

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