Oldies but goldies : "Powers of Ten" 1977 documentary film

"Powers of Ten" 1977

Produced by: Pyramid Films
Duration: 8:30 min
Copyright CERN

 Source : http://ippog-static.web.cern.ch/ippog-static/resources/2011/powers-ten.html

This short documentary film aims at increasing the understanding of the size of our universe by depicting its relative scale in factors of ten.
The film begins with an aerial image of a man reclining on a blanket; the view is that of one meter across. The viewpoint, accompanied by expository voice-over, then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across ( or 10^1 m in standard form), revealing that the man is picnicking in a park with a female companion. The zoom-out continues, to a view of 100 meters (10^2 m), then 1 kilometer (10^3 m), and so on, increasing the perspective; the picnic is revealed to be taking place near Soldier Field on Chicago's waterfront; and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of 10^24 meters, or the size of the observable universe. The camera then zooms back in to the picnic, and then to views of negative powers of ten; 10^-1 m (10 centimeters), and so forth, until we are viewing a carbon nucleus inside the man's hand at a range of 10-18 meter.

Instructions & questions

Draw a horizontal axis going from the smallest to the greatest power of ten explored in the documentary. Then add on it the name of each object that appears in the video & indicate approximately its position along the axis according to its size expressed in meters with powers of ten.

Can you find out what microcosm & macrocosm have in common thanks to this documentary (find out the definition of these words if you can't understand the question)?

Have you noticed no electron has been shown in this film at the atomic scale? Could you explain why?

Webquest

Since the documentary was made (1977), have physicists discovered any new particles inside/ smaller than nucleons ? Have astronomers observed any kind of new objects or phenomena in the sky?

Sitography

A great up to date animation to explore the different scales of the universe & some characteristic objects may be found here: https://htwins.net/scale2/