Powers of Ten
Friday, 22nd July 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Back in 1977, Charles and Ray Eames made a short movie entitled 'Powers of Ten', which Wikipedia describes like this:
It begins with a couple picnicking in a park; the view is that of one meter across. The viewpoint then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across. The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 meters, then 1 kilometer, and so on, increasing the perspective and continuing to zoom out to a field of view which is 1026 meters, or the size of the observable universe.
Anyway, this is the spot in Chicago where the film began (although it doesn't look quite the same these days), so you can re-create a bit of the film yourselves 🙂 (Here's a still from the film showing the starting point, and there's lots of info on the official site).
You can also watch the whole film on Google Video.
Thanks to Mark Eichin.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
On that movie still, the North is in the West^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hon the left!
This took me a while to figure out (stupid, I know).
Whoa, check out the view of Soldier Field (home of Da Bears) under re-construction on the west side of the image.
One of the big changes you will notice is that Lake Shore Drive (LSD) has been moved west. This article explains in 1996 north bound lanes of LSD were moved west of Soldier Field and the Field Museum. This created a museum campus including the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium. This area is cut off from the rest of Chicago.
Two interesting sites you can see near by are Soldier Field which is getting a MAJOR renovation at the time the image was taken. The other it the air strip east of Soldier Field. This is Meigs Field and no longer exists because the almighty Mayor Daley destroyed in the middle of the night a couple years ago. The area is now referred to by the name the island was given under the Burnham plan, Northerly Island.
“1026 meters, or the size of the observable universe.”
Uh, guys?
Should be 10^26 meters =]
Whoops, thanks guys – I fixed the post 😀
Thanks – meant to look this place up….
Where’s the guy in the field? When can we zoom in and see the atom?
Funny, the astronomical association here in finland gave out a book of the powers of ten, and it also features the smaller powers (10^-10 etc). It’s the same place, so it must have been based on the movie. And of course it’s a foreign book just translated.
Now what’s nice is that I looked this place up myself a couple of weeks ago but obviously I didn’t think it would be worth mentioning. 😉
The location of the original Cosmic View is also easily found. Roughly here.
Though the building is said to be gone, so as soon as google updates its images…