Compare a coffee bean to a single atom

I've previously blogged on Powers of Ten, a classic book that illustrates relative sizes of various things, both extremely large and extremely small. I just ran across a terrific website that illustrates that relative sizes of many kinds of small things, the largest of which is a coffee bean. When you go to this site, wait a bit so that it finishes loading. Then move the horizontal slider slowly to the right and enjoy your journey into the universe of small and smaller things, all the way down to a carbon atom. [applause!]

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Did our brains grow big because we learned to cook?

Consider that 60% of the energy expended by a resting baby is consumed by the baby's brain.  A resting adult brain uses 25% of its energy.  Compare this to the average ape brain, which uses only 8% of the apes energy.  In short, having a big brain requires a lot…

Continue ReadingDid our brains grow big because we learned to cook?