The Scale of the Universe

Check out this great flash animation, The Scale of the Universe, by Fotoshop in his portfolio on NewGrounds.com.  Like one of those infinite zoom images, this flash animation lets you zoom from 1x10-35 to 9.3x1026 by dragging the scroll bar across the bottom.

Since I’m visual, that’s from 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 meters (the Plank Length) up to 930,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters (the estimated size of the universe).

Found on Forgetomori.com

Update on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 9:08AM by Randy

A dedicated clean-page version is available to see here: http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale-of-the-universe.php

The Tallest Building: Burj Dubai

The Burj Dubai is a construction project to build the world's tallest building in Dubai.  Their website has a nice interactive comparison to the other key skyscrapers in the world.  The photo-like images on a black background with the reflection is very similar to the Apple Computer photo slideshows.

The goal of Burj Dubai is not simply to be the world's highest building.  It's to embody the world's highest aspirations.  Burj Dubai looks different depending on where you're standing.  For those living nearby, it is a shining accomplishment - tangible proof of Dubai's central role in a growing world.

Thanks Alwyn!

Classic infographic from 1823!

Here's a classic from 1823!  It a hand drawn infographic titled "Comparative Heights of the Principal Mountains and Lengths of the Principal Rivers of The World" by WR Gardner.  The high resolution image is on Flickr, but the post about the image is on bibliodyssey.blogspot.com.

This one makes a great poster!  Thanks Roi for sharing in the comments.

The Cost of Gadgets

From Wired.com, this is really a 3-dimensional chart. I liked it because there are very few 3D charts that actually portray 3 dimensions of data. (This is actually 4D if you include the different products as a dimension) Usually 3D charts are just bad use of chart styles from PowerPoint. I also like the perspective from above. Although unusual, it helps to see the whole chart.

Visualizing Pi (π)

Cool little GIF animation to visualize the value of Pi (π) from Wikipedia. Click the image to view the animation.

Found on digg.com

Bed Sheets for Couples

My wife got the biggest laugh out of these. Found on Information Aesthetics, these double bed sheets are printed with a ruler starting at the center and measuring outward. You can always tell whose side you're on because the ruler is printed to be read when you are in the bed.

The sheets are from DesignWise, a store chain with designer products in Portugal, Spain and France. DESIGNWISE is a brand that edits original products and objects created by Portuguese designers.

The Elegant Universe

Following my earlier post on Imagining the Tenth Dimension, I found that NOVA has put the entire 3-hour show The Elegant Universe on their website.

The show is full of different visual methods to visual strings, gravity, the scale of particles and multiple dimensions. Brian Greene really did a fantastic job with this show based on his book on the same name.

Starship Dimensions

As a follow-up to my earlier post on the Starship Comparison Poster, the Starship Dimensions website has a much more extensive library of sci-fi ships all shown to scale. There are so many here that the website is broken up into different pages from small scale up to "Big" scale. Click on the tabs across the top to pick a scale (100X, 10X, 1X, etc.).

Fantastic resource. Jeff Russell has done a great job accumulating the images and tracking down their relative sizes.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Ten dimensions are really hard for most people to understand. Especially since our lives are constrained to only four dimensions. This video from tenthdimension.com does an EXCELLENT job of using pretty simple animation and illustrations to explain the 10 dimensions of our universe.

This video is really good, even if you're not a physicist.