On 2008 Jan 26 , at 3:40 PM, Stan Jakuba wrote:
The attached distance-scaling video is understandable in any
language but only SI experts will notice the discrepancies between
the powers of 10 and the notations underneath.
<Fantasticky vylet[1].pps>
Fascinating set of slides based on an idea in a short movie called
"Powers Of Ten" and published about 40 or 50 years ago. I used it in
all my astronomy classes and often elsewhere.
If your computer can show those pictures as a slide show, do it. That
is the way it was intended to be seen, I'm sure. It pauses for a bit
longer time on certain slides (perhaps to synchronize with a recorded
narration). Just be patient; it will soon continue. Of course you can
also just click your mouse to step through the slides one at a time if
your prefer.
Regarding Stan's comment: I don't think there was a discrepancy. The
powers of ten shown were not intended to represent the distances
written below them on the slides. (Perhaps that was explained in the
text which I couldn't read. Was it Slovakian? Any language lessons
available, Stan?)
The powers of ten in EVERY case represented the number of METRES that
was the width and height of the square view shown. It was always in
metres, even though the value below it were usually not; they were
clearly given with appropriate units and seemed to be the equivalent
in kilometres, and other units. For example, slide #8 showed ten-to-
the-fourth-power in giant type. Below it was written "10 km". This
indicated that 10 km was equal to 10^4 times the base unit of 1 m,
that is 10000 m. It also meant that the aerial photograph of the
ground was an area 10^4 m wide and 10^4 m wide (or 10 km by 10 km).
Did you notice other errors in SI? There were several in the photos of
the very small things. The units micron and angstrom were used
(definitely not SI) and the metric prefixes were sometimes used with
these non-SI units (not good practice). Also, there were units that
looked like "pikometru", "Fotometr", "Atometru" which, in context,
clearly had to be picometres, femtometres and attometres, in English.
I wonder about their use of "Foto-" for "femto-". As I understand it,
different spelling are allowed in different languages, but I thought
they all had to be pronounced the same. Is "Foto-" in that language
pronounced the same as "femto-" in English?
Also I saw the presumably big units of "svetelny rok" once,
"svetelnych let" several times and "svetelnych roku" once. I don't
know what these are but they clearly are not SI units. (I'm wondering
whether they are light years or something. If they were all the same
that is what I would think, but the two that were different stumped
me. How about those language lessons, Stan?)
All in all, very interesting from the point of view of astronomy,
languages and metric, all of which fascinate me.
Bill Hooper
1810 mm tall
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
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SImplification Begins With SI.
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