Powers of Ten

The overhead exhibit on the second floor illustrates the size of things very large to very small. Each panel covers an area ten times larger than the panel to its immediate right. The length of the side of each panel is shown using the powers of ten. The display covers more than 40 orders of magnitude. The left-most panel illustrates the distance of 10²⁶ meters, which is the distance across the universe. The right-most panel illustrates 10^-15 which is the size of the radius of a proton. In the middle of the display is a park bench that is 1 (10⁰) meter long.

The metric system is described in a display above the park bench. The principal advantage of this system is that quantities of any size can be shown by decimals. This is further illustrated by an interactive display that allows multiplication and division of metric units. See Powers of Ten for a nice web site on this subject.

Display built by Jeanie McGowan, Earl Oman, Ryan Martin, John Caron and many others.