The Powers Ten

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A Personal Interpretation of the Short Film The Powers of Ten

The Powers of Ten ' is a short film done in a single shot to show how the size of something is related to the external and internal universe around and within it . The first half of the movie pans out from a man sleeping in a park to his outer universe - the park , the state of Michigan , planet Earth , the solar system , to the wide expanse of the galaxy and the billions of other galaxies

that comprise the universe Then , in reverse direction , the second half goes back to the man from the start of the film and probes inside into the vastness of the smallest , imaginable space inside him - from the skin , the atom , to the proton unseen by even the most powerful microscopes that would ever be invented . The film is a good mathematical presentation as to how large or small a thing is in comparison to the space which surrounds it and that from which the thing itself is a part of . It allows the viewer to look at things or imagine their size according to the proper perspective . We are used to seeing a picture of the solar system in the science classroom that we forget how small the earth is or grasp how big the solar system really is when viewed from an actual distance where the entire system could be seen in its wholeness . But by showing a video panning out from an image of a person to the view of the planets , the idea becomes more real than the picture or model in the classroom . It is the same with microscopic objects . The concept of an atom and how small it is , for example , would be better explained if one sees the part in the film where it goes inside the skin of the man to the tiniest particle which makes up the skin

However , more than the mathematical presentation and the trivia facts the film has had a philosophical impact in me in that after the viewing it made me conscious and aware all of a sudden as to how small the human being is compared to the boundless universe that surrounds him , while at the same time , how so much goes into the structure of a human body . Man seems an unimportant creature if measured against the vastness that he lives in . Yet , he must be so important enough if the whole human body could be composed of the same amount of minute vastness . It is a paradox how the immeasurable universe outside the human body is almost as immeasurable as the universe which makes up a single living cell . And every part , no matter how big or small is related to the other . Everyone and everything that exists is part of a whole design . This means that no matter how small or big a thing is , in the larger scheme of things , it has the...