How (many pixels) far is it to Mars?
April 6, 2013 § Leave a comment
If the Earth were 100 pixels wide, the Moon would be 3000 pixels away. Mars, at its closest, would be 428,000 pixels away. At the current state of space technology, it will take around 150 days to get to Mars.
Distance to Mars website, created by David Paliwoda & Jesse Williams, calculates the earth’s distance to Mars in a super cool way, in pixels.
Better to watch it on Chrome.
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The Chinese Room
April 3, 2013 § 2 Comments
Well this thought experiment is very close to my heart.
Do you believe that Artificial Intelligence is possible? I mean not now, but theoretically in the future? Do you think that we can build a machine so intelligent that it can be considered to think as a human? I do. But John Searle does not. And here is why – and it’s only 60 sec long:
Say it with an illustration
March 28, 2013 § Leave a comment
Say it with a quote or illustrate one? Malaysia-based illustrator Tang Yau Hoong pairs each of his illustrations with a famous quote. As simple as that, as beautiful as these posters…
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Do you have what it takes to become a teacher?
March 26, 2013 § Leave a comment
It’s the hardest job in the world; do you have what it takes? Take this 2min test and find out:
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DNA animated
March 18, 2013 § Leave a comment
DNA explained in a visually appealing way.
Created by Territory Studio and creative director David Sheldon-Hicks & art director William Samuel for BBC Knowledge & Learning Explainer series.
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Minimal science
March 10, 2013 § Leave a comment
When minimalism expresses the essence of meaning, design comes to honor the pioneering work of some of the world’s most famous scientists. From Darwin’s theory of evolution to Pythagoras’ theorem and Archimedes’ principle, Mumbai-based graphic designer Kapil Bhagat creates clever typographic posters of scientists’ names based on each genius’s breakthrough discovery.
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For the love of words
January 18, 2013 § 1 Comment
And not your basic, everyday words. Words that sound beautiful. Words that describe complex feelings or situations. Ancient words and neologisms. Words that exist for the benefit of word-lovers. Otherwordly is a tumblr that collects the most particular words from languages around the world. Here is a small anthology.
The unexamined life is not worth living
October 9, 2012 § Leave a comment
Inspiring words
May 23, 2012 § Leave a comment
A man’s wisdom in just one sentence. Clearly spoken and beautifully designed by Max Temkin, who in his project entitled Maxistentialism creates a set of Philosophy posters inspired by some of the most influential philosophers.
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Colorful multiplications
March 20, 2012 § Leave a comment
Did you own an abacus as a child? I did, but nobody ever bothered to explain it to me, so the colorful beads representing numbers remained a mystery and I never managed to perform any arithmetic functions on it. Thankfully, Stefanie Posavec revisited the concept of replacing numbers with colors, in a much more user-friendly way.
She explores the hidden patterns in multiplication of large numbers, and together with Hadrien Jouet they created multiplication waterfall, an online application for you to experiment with. You just insert the numbers and it does its mathematical magic. It translates the abstract patterns that mathematicians recognize into beautiful patterns of colors and shapes, for us laymen.
See also:
- Strange things that do exist: Computational Origami at MIT
- In literature / hidden haikus I have found / unexpectedly
- A fountain of time
The sky’s the limit
March 19, 2012 § Leave a comment
The sky is the limit. Well, it is the limit, if you can imagine that it contains more than 562 million stars, galaxies, asteroids, planets and objects, according to NASA that has released a mosaic of images covering the entire night sky, as captured by the infrared cameras of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which has been collecting data for the past two years.
You can see this panorama of the entire sky, compiled by 18,000 images here.
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Follow @itsasmallwebThe arrow of time
February 25, 2012 § 1 Comment
What makes the past different from the future? Just entropy. An excellent short video from Minute Physics, (a YouTube channel explaining physics with super cool animated videos), explores the differences between the past and the future.
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Our digital identity
January 10, 2012 § 1 Comment
How many pieces of our personal data are collected everyday by networks?
Michael Rigley creates an amazing motion video tracing the information we feed into the network everyday .
via Quipsologies
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Creating a mini universe
December 13, 2011 § 1 Comment
In 2010, scientists succeeded in recreating a miniature version of the Big Bang. Within a few years, some of the universe’s deepest secrets may be unlocked.
In Genesis, a 3D short film, Andreas Wannerstedt is taking the change to create a miniature universe and become a mini God.
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I am just a noun
October 3, 2011 § Leave a comment
Who remembers Joseph Guillotin, Henry Shrapnel and Etienne de Silhouette? Robert Krulwich and Adam Cole in this NPR’s witty video describe the lives of people who became known mostly as nouns.
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Follow @itsasmallwebSix degrees of artistic influences
September 21, 2011 § Leave a comment
We have seen her work before, illustrating the food habits of famous writers and poets. Now Wendy MacNaughton illustrates in a visually engaging manner the Circles of Influence, created by Michelle Legro and Maria Popova, which reveal the creative encounters and intersections of different writers, scientists, genres and eras.
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Strictly for philotypes
August 31, 2011 § 1 Comment
All these -isms that gave meaning to complex philosophical concepts and formed our common understanding: relativism, absolutism, hedonism, humanism, passivism, realism, authoritarianism, solipsism, reductionism, determinism, deism and so many others, but we never quite managed to remember them all.
Designer Genis Carreras helps us understand and visualise all these philosophical ideologies through his series of minimalistic posters, entitled Philographics, with just the use of simple geometric shapes.
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Darwin, the rock star
July 14, 2011 § 1 Comment
Rene Descartes, a pop idol and Charles Darwin, the rock star. That’s how graphic designer Simon Bent decided to re-popularise some of the greatest scientists in history. In his series of illustrations Science vs. Delirium, he renders these iconic figures in the kinds of psychedelic patterns and colors, just like in 1960s acid-rock posters.
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The journey of the English language in time
July 4, 2011 § 3 Comments
How did the English language evolve in time? Ten witty animated videos released by the Open University tell us ‘The History of English in 10 Minutes’, bringing us through 1600 years of linguistic history. From the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings to the English of the Internet, the journey of the language goes on.
Watch the rest of the videos: Anglo-Saxon, The Norman Conquest, Shakespeare, The King James Bible, The English of Science, English and Empire, The Age of the Dictionary, American English, Global English.
via OpenCulture
See also:
- Can you take a hint?
- “Pun,ctu.a’tion?”
- Help the semicolon not to become extinct
- The incredible shrinking sentence and other wonders of the english language in the year 2011
The lights from above
June 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
We have already seen the colorful aerial patterns created in the sky of North America during 24 hours. With this new 24 hour observation, you can understand that from space earth looks like a beehive of activity. As the light of day is moving from the east to the west and Earth spins on its axis, aircrafts cross the whole universe, creating numerous different patterns.
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