Powers of Ten (Revised) (Scientific American Library Paperback) [Paperback]

Philip Morrison (Author), Phylis Morrison (Author), Office of Charles & Ray Eames (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1994

Over 100,000 copies of this spectacular journey have already been sold. In forty-two consecutive scenes, each at a different 'power of ten' level of magnification, readers are taken from the dimension of one billion light years to the realm of the atom. The text and other illustrations depict what we can perceive at each progressively smaller level of magnitude. "A brilliant pictorial and textual embodiment of a wonderful idea." Stephen Jay Gould Videos of Powers of Ten are available from: RITELtd. Cross Tree, Walton Street, Walton in Gordano, Clevedon, Avon BS21 7AW Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Back in 1968, designers Charles and Ray Eames made a 10-minute documentary film, titled Powers of Ten, showing what the universe looks like at different scales. Philip and Phylis Morrison were scientific advisors on the movie, which Philip narrated, and it was chosen in 1998 for preservation in the National Film Registry, which selects "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant motion pictures" for preservation. The Morrisons' book translates the film onto paper.

Starting with a view of a billion light-years, the book (like the film) moves inward, with each page being at one-tenth the scale of the previous one. In 25 steps, you're looking at a picnic by the shores of Lake Michigan, then plunging into a human hand, down through the cells inside it, the DNA inside the cells, the atoms inside the DNA, and the subatomic particles inside the atom. By the time you've gone a total of 40 steps, you're in a world of quantum uncertainty.

There is no better guide to the relative sizes of things in the universe, and no better teacher about what exponential, scientific notation really means. --Mary Ellen Curtin

Product Details

• Paperback: 159 pages
• Publisher: W.H. Freeman & Company; Revised edition (August 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0716760088
• ISBN-13: 978-0716760085
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 3.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #399,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Influential and awe-inspiring, January 1, 2001

By 

Mike Christie (Austin, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powers of Ten (Revised) (Scientific American Library Paperback) (Paperback)

"Powers of Ten" is one of the most influential science books ever printed. It taught me, and tens of thousands of other children, that a "sense of wonder" is something you can get from science, as well as from science fiction. I found it in a bookstore seven or eight years ago, and was immediately transported back to when I first read it, in my school library, at the age of ten. I was swept off my feet at ten years old, and the book can still sweep me off my feet today.

The original film was potent too; more so in the directness with which it expresses the scale of the world. But the book, with its annotations and additional pictures, has its own power. You can flip back and forth, and take as much time as you want absorbing the incredible range of scale in the universe.

The book's first picture is scaled at about a billion light years across--ten to the twenty-fifth metres. On this scale even super-clusters of galaxies are just clots of dust on a black background. The right hand side of each page, as you go through the book, zooms in by a factor of ten, and we dive into galaxy clusters, into our galaxy, our spiral arm, our solar system, through the moon's orbit and into the earth's atmosphere, down into North America, and then Chicago, and a picnicker asleep in a park. After twenty five pages we're at a human scale; the pictured scene is a metre across. But the camera continues to zoom in; to the picnicker's hand, through his skin to a lymphocyte, and on down through the cell nucleus to coils of DNA, to a carbon atom and through its electron cloud, and down to the nucleus and beyond. Sixteen pages from the picnicker have brought us to the quarks.

The left hand side of each page provides companion pictures and comments, some drawn from the history of science. For the nanometre picture there's a copy of John Dalton's two-hundred-year-old models of simple molecules; at the millimetre and tenth-millimetre scale there are pictures of radiolaria, seeds, and other microscopic beauties. All are interesting and informative.

I can't recommend this book too strongly--it's a fundamental work of scientific culture, and should be in every house. However, I particularly recommend that you buy this for any nine-to-fourteen-year-old child in your life; it's the best way I know to introduce a child to a love of science.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No doubt deserves 5 stars; SURPRIZE it can be a child's book, July 27, 2001

By 

Steven Marks "Prog Harpo" (Petaluma, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Powers of Ten (Revised) (Scientific American Library Paperback) (Paperback)

This is a great book. Believe it or not, I walk my 5 year old son through the pictures. I am sure it is not meant for youngsters but it can be used like I am am doing.

The idea behind the book is on its smallest scale it is inside a qark inside an atomic nucleus, inside an atom, attached to a DNA molecule, inside a nucleus of a white blood cell, slightly below the skin on a hand of a man asleep at a picnic on some grass in Chicago....all the way to the scale of the universe. My son and I will transverse the middle 1/3 or 1/2 of the journey. He gets to pick his own bedtime books and he chooses this one out of hundreds once or twice a week.

The pictures make a great way to explain the concept of scale and various aspects of science. On the facing page of the main picture underconsideration are objects of the same scale. You can really see that the tail of a dinosaur is 10 times longer than a man.

For the adult, it is an easy introduction to various aspects of science all at different scales. It is not a super serious book - no math - simple explanations. But as a practicing scientist, I view it as vary factual.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A picture is worth a 10³ words! Amazing!, October 4, 2001

By 

Leon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Powers of Ten (Revised) (Scientific American Library Paperback) (Paperback)

I've seen this book for the first time in 1985, when I was kid. It is still my all-time favorite.

Although the book does have lots of textual info pages, the core of the book is a series of 42 full-page pictures which depict the an ordinary picnic photo in different scales.

Starting from an ordinary dude resting on the grass, each page turn shows the scene from 10 times farther away. First we see the park he is picnicing on, then the entire city, and before you know it we are in deep space racing towards the outskirts of the Universe.

On the other side of the journey, each page turn magnifies the last picture tenfold. First by viewing a close-up view of the picnicing guy's hand, you quickly find yourself probing deeper and deeper through the realms of biology and chemistry right into the core of a single atom.

The really cool thing about the whole deal, is that all the images are centered at the same object: a single atom on the picnicing dude's hand.

In short, the idea is absolutely brilliant. The images chosen for the presentation is not perfect, but they are still amazing. Of-course, the film is much more impressive then the book, but you can't take a film with you to a camping trip...