Nice display, but it starts off with misleading measurements of DNA. The spacing between DNA base pairs is 0.34 nm, so the 10 base pairs pictured are in fact 3.4 nm. But the DNA in a single human cell is about 2 meters, and chromosome lengths vary from 2 to 10 cm. I am skeptical of the hemoglobin vs ribosome sizes as well; hemoglobin has a molecular weight of about 60,000, while ribosomes weigh more than 5 million.
Size of Life
281–286 of 286 posts
Re: Size of Life
#282> A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites. Definitely worthy the scroll!
Also: Banana - Although not technically living, it does make for a good size comparison.
It had to be added:
> Tyrannosaurus rex. One of the largest land predators ever, it had teeth the size of a banana
Re: Size of Life
#283I would like to play an open world game (like Minecraft) where 1 in-game meter equals 1 micrometer in the real world. That way, one could get a feeling about the scale of things.
Hmm, perhaps with flying? When stuck on the ground, people's feel for size gets poorer as things get bigger (tall buildings, clouds, map distances). I think of having 4ish orders of magnitude available for visual reference in a classroom (cm to 10 m), plus less robustly 100 m and km in AR. At that micrometer per meter, a grain of salt towers over a city skyline - "nano view" in [1] (eep - a decade ago now - I was abo…
Hmm, err, that could be misleading... 4ish for visible lengths in a large class. But especially in a small group, one can use reference objects of sand (mm) and flour (fine 100 um, ultrafine 10 um). The difference between the 100 um and 10 being more behavioral and feel (eg mouth feel) than unmagnified visible size. Thus with an outdoor view (for 100 m), one can use less-abstract "it's like that there accessible length" concrete-ish analogues across like 8 orders of magnitude. Or drop to 6, or maybe push for 9, as multiples of 3 nicely detent across SI prefixes.
Re: Size of Life
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
He has many other cool visualizations! Space Elevator: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45640226 Deep Sea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21850527
He was also responsible for one of the worst web pages ever created: https://neal.fun/stimulation-clicker/ (It's utterly brilliant but monstrous.)
I'll just stick to Baldur's Gate II, thanks -- my favorite inventory management simulation
Re: Size of Life
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
When my daughter is old enough, I'm definitely going to show her a bunch of visualizations on Neal's site as supplementary education. I learned so much from these visualizations as an adult, and even without being able to read you can get a sense of scale.
> When my daughter is old enough Fwiw, I've done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm "body as size reference" a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x "micro view" "pinch is zoomed to arms size" "it's like a scale model or doll playset - everything zoomed together" world of "bacteria sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&M minis or concave Smarties minis or Sweetarts - there's lots of cell candy analogs), hair p…
Hey that's cool! I like that idea
Re: Size of Life
#286Arthropleura is missing shadow.