I shrink 10x every 21s until I'm an atom – The Micro Universe [video](youtube.com)
youtube.com
I shrink 10x every 21s until I'm an atom – The Micro Universe [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn9dkV4sVYQ
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A redo of a classic, the powers of 10
https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0
As an alternative to those steps of 10x, one can do 1000x steps. Real world, micro-world, nano-world, etc. Easier to remember, but harder to then work in.
If I ask you how big a cup is, you're unlikely to handwave a thimble, or a trash bin - you've handled cups, and they're familiar. At 1000x zoom, that red blood cell is sized like a red M&M candy (though they're really barely-tinted clear). Familiar, memorable, finger-nail sized - 10-ish mumble meters. Not millimeters (wouldn't fit in your arm), not nanometers (too small), must be micrometers. A 10 um candy - munch, munch. Table salt is a cardboard box, etc. With 10x steps, an object appears at a variety of sizes, so that familiarity anchor is absent. But a downside of 1000x, is object sizes can be inconvenient. A public bus appears as either actual-bus sized (real world), or grain-of-rice size (meter-world) - neither great for drawing a sketch. So 1000x is nice to remember object sizes and their relationships, but then you'll often need some other scaling.
If you're really interested in the topic, I did a page with some videos, but I'm afraid I've let it fall off the web. Internet Archive has it, but the page is very heavy and slow to load (wasn't intended to be public), so please be gentle with them. https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/clarifyscience.in...
If I ask you how big a cup is, you're unlikely to handwave a thimble, or a trash bin - you've handled cups, and they're familiar. At 1000x zoom, that red blood cell is sized like a red M&M candy (though they're really barely-tinted clear). Familiar, memorable, finger-nail sized - 10-ish mumble meters. Not millimeters (wouldn't fit in your arm), not nanometers (too small), must be micrometers. A 10 um candy - munch, munch. Table salt is a cardboard box, etc. With 10x steps, an object appears at a variety of sizes, so that familiarity anchor is absent. But a downside of 1000x, is object sizes can be inconvenient. A public bus appears as either actual-bus sized (real world), or grain-of-rice size (meter-world) - neither great for drawing a sketch. So 1000x is nice to remember object sizes and their relationships, but then you'll often need some other scaling.
If you're really interested in the topic, I did a page with some videos, but I'm afraid I've let it fall off the web. Internet Archive has it, but the page is very heavy and slow to load (wasn't intended to be public), so please be gentle with them. https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/clarifyscience.in...