Powers of Ten (film)

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Powers of Ten
File:Powers-of-Ten-film-(1977)-title-card.png
Title card for the 1977 "Final" version
Directed by Charles and Ray Eames
Based on Cosmic View (1957) by Kees Boeke (book)
Narrated by Judith Bronowski (1968), Philip Morrison (1977)
Music by Elmer Bernstein
Distributed by IBM
Release dates
 1968 ("Sketch" version)
1977 ("Final" version)
Running time
 8 min ("Sketch" version)
9 min ("Final" version)
Country United States
Language English

The Powers of Ten films are two short American documentary films written and directed by Charles and Ray Eames. Both works depict the relative scale of the Universe according to an order of magnitude (or logarithmic scale) based on a factor of ten, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed. The first film: A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe[1] — was a prototype and was completed in 1968; the second film: Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero[2] — was completed in 1977.

The Powers of Ten films were adaptations of the book Cosmic View (1957) by Dutch educator Kees Boeke.[3] Both films, and a book based on the second film,[4] follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work.

The 1977 film has a number of changes from the prototype, including being entirely in color, moving the starting location from Miami to Chicago, removing the relativistic (time) dimension, introducing an additional two powers of ten at each extreme, a change in narrator from Judith Bronowski to Philip Morrison, and much improved graphics.[1]

In 1998, Powers of Ten (1977) was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[5][6]

Synopses

1968 ("Sketch") version

Full title: A Rough Sketch for a Proposed Film Dealing with the Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe

This version of the film has a time clock in the corner showing that as one goes into space, they are also going back in time. It was installed in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum's Life in the Universe gallery at the time of the museum's opening in 1976, until the gallery's closure in 1978.

There is also a 1968 National Film Board of Canada film entitled Cosmic Zoom which covers the same subject using animation. It is wordless, using sped-up music during the return trips to normal size.

1977 ("Final") version

Full title: Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero

The film begins with an overhead view of a man and woman picnicking in a park at the Chicago lakefront — a one-meter-square overhead image of the figures on a blanket surrounded by food and books they brought with them, one of them being The Voices of Time by J. T. Fraser. The man then sleeps, while the woman starts to read one of the books. The viewpoint, accompanied by expository voiceover by Philip Morrison, then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across (or 101 m in scientific notation). The zoom-out continues (at a rate of one power of ten per 10 seconds), to a view of 100 meters (102 m) (where they are shown to be in Burnham Park, near Soldier Field, then 1 kilometer (103 m) (where we see the entirety of Chicago), and so on, increasing the perspective and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of 1024 meters, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in at a rate of a power of ten per 2 seconds to the picnic, and then slows back down to its original rate into the man's hand, to views of negative powers of ten—10−1 m (10 centimeters), and so forth—until the camera comes to quarks in a proton of a carbon atom at 10−16 meter.[1]

Related books

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Related films

Other media interpretations

  • The Scale of the Universe 2 by Huang Twins[10]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Boeke, Kees. Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps. John Day Co., 1957.
  4. ↑ Morrison, Philip, et al. Powers of Ten: About the Relative Size of Things in the Universe. Scientific American Books, 1990.
  5. ↑ Films Selected to The National Film Registry, 1989-2010.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ http://htwins.net/scale2/

External links

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