2.01.2010

putting things in perspective

When I was a child, I had a book called How Big Is Big?. Is your big brother big? Is an elephant big? A redwood tree? A whale? A mountain? The ocean? The Earth? Jupiter?

The second half of the book asked "How small is small?" A baby? A puppy? A grain of rice? Bacteria? An atom? And so forth.

Obviously the book meant to stimulate a young mind to ask, "Compared to what?" and to think about perspective.

Here's an updated, visual version of the same idea. Amazing stuff: The Scale of the Universe. Click, then click "play".

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