Powers of Ten

A film project by Charles and Ray Eames, 1977
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​The film begins with an overhead view of a man and woman picnicking in a park at the Chicago lakefront — a one-meter-square overhead image of the figures on a blanket surrounded by food and books they brought with them.

The viewpoint then slowly zooms out to a view ten meters across.

The zoom-out continues (at a rate of one power of ten per 10 seconds), to a view of 100 meters (where they are shown to be in Burnham Park, near Soldier Field.

Then 1 kilometer (1,000 m) (where we see the entirety of Chicago).

And so on, increasing the perspective and continuing to zoom out to a field of view of the observable universe.

The camera then zooms back in at a rate of a power of ten per 2 seconds to the picnic, and then slows back down to its original rate into the man's hand, to views of negative powers of ten (10 centimeters), and so forth, revealing a mosquito and zooming in on it—until the camera comes to quarks in a proton of a carbon atom.