URBAN EDGE FOREST THERAPY
  • Home
  • About
    • About Forest Therapy
    • About Urban Edge
    • Gallery
  • Walks and Events
    • Sign up for a Walk
    • What Can I Expect?
    • Why Do I Need a Guide?
    • Community Outreach
    • Testimonials
  • Trail Certification
  • Additional Resources
    • Books
  • Contact
  • Blog

OVER THE EDGE
The Hacker's Guide to Discovering Urban Nature


Photo: Courtesy Joel Sternfeld
(c) 2001 All rights reserved.


Powers of Ten

3/27/2018

0 Comments

 
Powers of 10 movie
From ants to elephants, from grains of sand to mountains, life and matter present in a spectrum of sizes, each bearing complexity. Each grain of sand contains micro peaks and valleys, variations in form from angular to rounded, and complex mineral composition, including varying combinations and proportions of quartz, feldspar, pyroxene, gypsum, amphibole, garnet, epidote and other minerals. Though on a smaller scale, a grain of sand can reveal the complexity of an entire mountain, much like how to an ant a field of grass is a forest. As the poet Gary Snyder writes:

As the crickets’ soft autumn hum
is to us
so are we to the trees
as are they
to the rocks and the hills

The iconic 1977 science film "Powers of Ten" explores the relative size of things in the universe and the impact of adding or subtracting another zero to their scale. Beginning one meter above a man and woman on a picnic blanket in a park on the Chicago lake front, the film extends out from the park at incremental increasing "powers of ten": 10 meters, 100 meters, 1,000 meters and so on exponentially, one order of magnitude every ten seconds, until it reaches 10 to the 24th, the outer edge of the known universe. The film then reverses course, zooming back to the picnic blanket at decreasing orders of magnitude. From there, it zooms into the man’s hand at negative powers of ten until it reaches 10 to the -16th and subatomic particles.  

Conveying the universe as “an arena of both continuity and change, of everyday picnics and cosmic mystery” (as stated on the website of Charles and Ray Eames, the film’s creators), the film is one of my favorites. It reminds us that there are “worlds within worlds” and that with sensitivity to scale and perspective we can embrace these varying dimensions and the sense of wonder that comes with exploring them.

I invite you to take a look at the film, below, and think about what it can teach you about exploring the world on different scales.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    About this Blog

    Hi! I'm Nancy Kopans, founder of Urban Edge Forest Therapy. Join me on an adventure to discover creative ways to connect with nature in your daily life, ways that are inspired by urban surroundings that can reveal unexpected beauty, with the potential to ignite a sense of wonder.

    Want to be alerted to new blog posts? Follow me on Twitter.

    Archives

    April 2023
    October 2020
    June 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All
    Animal Mineral Vegetable: Animal
    Animal Mineral Vegetable: Mineral
    Animal Mineral Vegetable: Vegetable
    Art & Architecture
    Earth Wind And Fire: Wind
    Fact And Figures
    Intro
    It's A Holiday
    Light
    Native New Yorkers
    Nature's Medicine
    Parks And Recreation
    Plant Medicine
    Pocket Adventures
    Space/Time Paradigms
    Urban Astronomy
    Water
    Weather
    Wisdom

    RSS Feed

Privacy
©2017-2024 Urban Edge Forest Therapy LLC. All rights reserved.

Photo from mbtphoto (away a lot)
  • Home
  • About
    • About Forest Therapy
    • About Urban Edge
    • Gallery
  • Walks and Events
    • Sign up for a Walk
    • What Can I Expect?
    • Why Do I Need a Guide?
    • Community Outreach
    • Testimonials
  • Trail Certification
  • Additional Resources
    • Books
  • Contact
  • Blog