Steven Strogatz's Opinionator: The Sagan Planet Walk
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Steven Strogatz article “Opinionator” is very interesting because Strogatz describes the different aspects to the Sagan Planet Walk, which was built in honor of Carl Sagan. The Sagan Planet Walk was designed to give people an experience of what the solar system is like up close. According to Strogatz, “The Sagan Walk is a remarkable achievement in the visualization of vastness. It succeeds because it’s designers chose the right reduction factor and because the six orders of magnitude in the solar system happen to be within our perceptual power to grasp all at once.”(Strogatz 2). The Sagan Planet Walk is something that I would love to experience because I want to see the solar system up close and I want to know how it feels to have all of the planets surrounding your body.…show more content… He stated “Earth is about 8,000 miles in diameter and 93,000,000 miles from the Sun, does that give you any sense of the distances involved? No, because the numbers are too big…Things that are so far removed from our daily experience... are inherently hard to understand.” (Strogatz, 1). I agree with Strogatz statement because I can not comprehend large numbers, especially when I do not use them in my daily life. Strogatz uses an example about height to emphasize that people do not say large numbers because others would not comprehend it. He stated “For example, you wouldn’t state your height in billions of nanometers… because people aren’t very good at comprehending numbers like a billion.” (Strogatz, 1). I agree with this because you don’t tell people your height in billions of nanometers, you just say the exact number of what your height is. If you were to say your height in billions of nanometers, people would most likely not understand the number. Therefore, that is why we just say the exact number of our height, age or anything