Welcome to www.ordersofmagnitude.biz

Scale is a powerful concept. It is similar to geography, in that if you know your geography and you hear about something happening in a foreign land (whether Yemen, Australia or Florida are foreign to you), you have a place in your mind to hang that information. But if you don't, then you are like that Steinberg New Yorker cover "View from 9th Avenue", where you know your own local world very well, but the outside world not at all.

Unfortunately, most of us are that way about scale. We know our human scale very well, but have no real connection to realms much larger and much smaller. But, especially in this day and age, it is critical to be scale-literate.

This is site is basically a giant suggested reading resource intended to suggest and share books, news and links that relate to each of the orders of magnitude from 10 to the 0 up to 10 to the 26 meters (10 billion light years) and down to 10 to the -18 meters.

This site jumps off from some of the ideas in the film Powers of Ten by Charles and Ray Eames. To order this landmark film, please go the official Powers of Ten website at www.powersof10.com. www.ordersofmagnitude.biz also jumps off from some of the ideas explored in the CD-ROM Powers of Ten Interactive. That CD-ROM was designed by Eames Demetrios for the Eames Office in 1999 as an interactive essay on scale. This site is supported by edemetrios.com as further exploration and thinking on this topic.

In addition to the CD-ROM, Demetrios developed the Powers of Ten exhibition which appeared in 3 different countries and 7 different cities, including Chicago, Lisbon, Sunderland, and San Francisco. This exhibition was an exploration of the idea that one could create a travelling, site-specific exhibition that had a core identity which the institution could count on, but that could still be customized to each institution.