Developing an Intuitive Sense of Scale

2 comments

• thunderbong5 hours ago
  Very interesting.<p>Focusing on the magnitude instead of the value of a number, changes the perspective when we&#x27;re talking or thinking in these scales.<p>From the site:<p>&gt; The universe is very large, but it is not infinite. All quantities in the universe (distance, time, energy, mass, etc) exist within 50 to 100 orders of magnitude.<p>&gt; The human species interacts with only 25 of these magnitudes.
  • NitpickLawyer1 hour ago
    &gt; The universe is very large, but it is not infinite.<p>We actually don&#x27;t know this, it&#x27;s still an open question.
    • wahern1 hour ago
      s&#x2F;universe&#x2F;observable universe&#x2F;
• d--b3 hours ago
  While it is easier to think of large numbers in terms of logarithms, cause it makes unfathomly large numbers much more palatable, I disagree that it makes scales more intuitive.<p>1 billion is a very large number, and thinking of it as 10^9 make it seem smaller.<p>1 trillion is &quot;just&quot; 3 orders of magnitude above 1 billion, and &quot;only&quot; 9 orders of magnitude less than the number of atoms in a mole.<p>I don&#x27;t know the answer to making the mind understand scale. I don&#x27;t think things like &quot;it &#x27;s about 2000 football pitches&quot; help either. I don&#x27;t think &quot;a billion is the number of cubic milimeter in a cubic meter&quot; work either. I don&#x27;t think the logarithm based &quot;zoom visualization&quot; work either. I just think the brain just cannot picture what those numbers mean. We&#x27;re not wired to understand those things very well, just as we aren&#x27;t wired to work with 4+ dimensions