My six-year-old told me she doesn't understand her homework. After studying it for 15 minutes, I *think* I understand what she's supposed to do, but I'd like a second opinion.... More.
[PHOTO: "Jessie," a CC-licensed image by LeTiger.] A few weeks ago, I blogged a funny video created by a Canadian high-school student titled "Hiding Your Sexual Orientation From Your Parents 101." One of the many people who commented on that post was an anonymous commenter who wrote: Ok, my pa... More.
A woman in Florida bought a bunch of wrapping paper for Christmas at a dollar store and when she brought it home, she noticed that one of the rolls had swastikas on it. The manager of the store said the paper was made in China and he didn't know about the swastikas. Woman discovers swastika... More.
Look at this kick-ass anatomical ad for the International Vegetarian Union. Vegetables are all your body needs (via Street Anatomy) Previously:Anatomical latex Hallowe'en mask - Boing Boing Anatomical models for artist's reference - Boing Boing Anatomical armchairs - Boing Boing Plush... More.
Rick sez, "SFFaudio has just announced their 4th Annual Make an Audiobook, Get an Audiobook Challenge. They have twenty Science Fiction and Fantasy titles of public domain and Creative Commons novels that they'd like to see freely available as audiobooks on the internet. They're looking for parti... More.
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This is a truly cool visualization. I played with this for a while trying to get a better feel for the relative scale of things. Reminds me of Powers of Ten
Or, better yet, Powers of Ten (film)
I've always enjoyed these sorts of things. It's interesting to wrap one's mind around the staggering scales involved. I recall seeing a video a few years back which went from the cosmic scale, to the atomic and back again. Something like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfpb9GqYLiI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs5doooe2VY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPumskk1dGk
Star and planet sizes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0lxbzgwW7I
Also, is it just me, or does the lone carbon atom seem to be larger than the carbon atoms in the adenine?
It doesn't help me understand the size of tiny things at all! It messes with my intuition, because I want to say "I can see a grain of salt with my naked eye, so I could definitely see something half that size." "Oh, only a couple of paramecium could fit on a grain of salt. That's not so small"
And so on and so on, until I convince myself that if I really squint hard enough I can see electron shells.
Still mindblowing, though! ;-)
This is the coolest thing I have seen for quite some time :)
Now to just remove the log scale and make you manually scroll
Very, very cool.
Hehehehehe!
You are here............................X
...And Zaphod still remained sane (?)
A friend of mine did this one, in a similar vein:
http://heliosophiclabs.com/~mad/Analogizer/
I can't adequately explain just how much I have always wanted to have a visual explanation of this very scale... containing several of these very objects. Thank you!
what a cool tool!
The size of the nucleus in the carbon atom is off by a factor of about 10,000. If you expand the nucleus to the size of one pixel, the carbon atom would be too big to fit on your screen. It would be more than 40 feet in diameter.
Ain't that something?
Or better yet, Cosmic Zoom.
Why does it not zoom all the way out to real size?
also...
@chroma
If The Eiffel Tower were the size of a walnut, then the Earth would be 6.1 times the size of the Eiffel Tower.
Fucking profound
Very cool, though I would have liked it to zoom out just enough to make the coffee bean actual size.
Good non-god, I love vector art, especially for its more or less infinite scalability. Very groovy little simulation.
"Actual size" it tricky on an app like that (for example, imagine it running on an iPhone, or at least a phone that can do flash, like the N900) - but yeah, I'd like to have seen it try, and maybe even zoom further out, too.