Universcale - Physics is all about Scales - an interactive demo of scales from nano meter to nonillion meters
We are able to view all entities, from the microworld to the universe, from a single perspective. By setting them up against a scale, we are able to compare and understand things which cannot be physically compared.
Today, using the electron microscope and astronomical telescope, we can see the objects which we have not been aware of its existence before. Are you able to fathom, or even roughly grasp, these sizes?
See our Universcale and experience the sizes of various objects.
This is a remarkably beautiful interactive website that takes you from the nano meter sized structure to something as big as the size of the universe.
The part that I really like about this demo is that there is no sudden and unexplained transition from using the scale of meters or kilometers in describing things around us to something that is described in light years when we shift to explaining the cosmos.
To understand a distance of “a light year”, the reader has to know and appreciate the speed of the light (most can’t fathom it), he/she has to have the imagination to figure out how much does light travel in a year (most people can’t even tell you how many seconds there are in a year); and then has to transpose its natural instinct of using “year” to describe time to using a light year to describe distance. I think that is asking for way too much from an uninitiated user.
A light year is about 10 trillion kilometers. So the factor of 10^16 remains unappreciated and misunderstood.
But I digress; the Universcale is an interesting way to grapple with the scales of things around you, starting from atoms to the far away galaxies that you see. Check it out.
Size matters, or so this website will have it. This amazing site shows you scale as you have probably never seen it - from the smallest speck to the largest asteroid and beyond. Fantastic graphics will give you a real idea of your place on the planet - or indeed the universe.
