How (many pixels) far is it to Mars?

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.

See also:

• Minimal Science
• Science songs
• The arrow of time

The Chinese Room

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:

from the Open University

Say it with an illustration

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…

See more after the jump

Do you have what it takes to become a teacher?

It’s the hardest job in the world; do you have what it takes? Take this 2min test and find out:

 

See also:

• The ABCs of cinema
• What kind of reader are you?
• Can you name the typeface?

DNA animated

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.

See also:

• (notes on) biology
• The DNA of a city
• How big is our universe?

Minimal science

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.

See more after the jump

For the love of words

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

Quotes by some of the most influential philosophers, illustrated by Max Temkin:

via so bad so good

Inspiring words

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.

See more after the jump

Colorful multiplications

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

Follow @itsasmallweb

The sky’s the limit

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.

See also:

• Creating a mini universe
• Science songs
• How big is our universe?

Follow @itsasmallweb

The arrow of time

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.

See also:

• How big is our universe?
• Creating a mini universe
• Antikythera mechanism explained by LEGO

Our digital identity

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

See also:

• In 60 seconds
• The universe of social networks
• The internet in 2015
• It started with the occasional profile update and now you are hooked: social media addiction

Creating a mini universe

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.

See also:

• Science songs
• How big is our universe?
• Science distilled in a phrase
• Antikythera mechanism explained by LEGO

I am just a noun

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.

See also:

• The journey of the English language in time
• Science songs
• Can you take a hint?

Follow @itsasmallweb

Six degrees of artistic influences

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.

See also:

• Food for inspiration
• I shall not live in vain
• Social networks from the Enlightement

Strictly for philotypes

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.

See more after the jump

Darwin, the rock star

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.

See more after the jump

The journey of the English language in time

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

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.

See also:

• Flight patterns
• Flight diaries
• How big is our universe?