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	I too enjoy these also but wonder if our visitors or the general  
public get it. Anyone know?


Martin
On Oct 22, 2008, at 12:10 PM, Jeff Courtman wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> The problem with these analogies (I will confess a fondness for the  
> rats-at-the-Exploratorium), at least when they are used in earnest,  
> is that they usually presume I have the ability to conceptualize  
> really big or really small.....Last night I was dutifully watching  
> Nova and a program called "Parallel Universes/Parallel Lives" about  
> Mark Oliver Everett, musician and son of Hugh Everett, trying to  
> better understand his father's theory - many worlds interpretation  
> of quantum physics - as a means of discovering a man he didn't know  
> very well in life.
>
> One of Hugh Everett's colleagues was trying to explain some the  
> concepts - and the narrator says of a pencil dot the colleague has  
> just made, there are more atoms in that single dot than there are  
> pencils in the world......great comparison but the problem is how on  
> earth can I conceive of such a large number of pencils?  Put all  
> together, would these pencils stack to the moon and back?  Would you  
> be able to build the Eiffel Tower with them?
>
> When one mixes orders of orders of magnitude - it is very difficult  
> for most of us to visualize in a meaningful way...
>
> (By the way...if you stacked a million nickels they would be taller  
> than 5 Sears Towers stacked on top of each other (without the radio  
> antennas)....
>
> Before I end, let me say I enjoy thinking about such things, its  
> just that most of the time, I don't 'get' it.....
> 	



____________________________________
Martin Weiss, PhD
Science Interpretation, Consultant
New York Hall of Science

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