271: Powers of One

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Powers of One
It's kinda Zen when you think about it, if you don't think too hard.
Title text: It's kinda Zen when you think about it, if you don't think too hard.

Explanation

This is a parody of the short documentary "Powers of 10", which can be found here.

As in the documentary, the comic features a man and a woman having a picnic on a blanket. In the documentary, the apparent distance from the scene, and thus the zoom level, gradually changes by a factor of ten every ten seconds (hence the name "Powers of 10": 1, 10, 100, ...). In the comic, powers of one are used. Since all powers of 1 are 1, the image doesn't change at all, showing a series of identical images.

The title text notes that this idea may seem profound (or "Zen", which is commonly used in American slang to mean "profound"), but is not upon scrutiny.

Transcript

[A sequence, presumably continuing endlessly in both directions, of identical images of a couple lying on a chequered blanket, with a picnic basket, on grass. Each image has a rule at the bottom giving measurements in meters, with the scale in terms of 1 to a particular power. The powers visible are the -1th (part), 0th-2nd, and 3rd (part).]


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Discussion

I got the math joke but did not know about the documentary, very interesting. 184.66.160.91 04:26, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I want a "Powers of i" documentary. 172.68.132.95 08:21, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Basiclly it will in each iteration rotate image 90 degrees. /* 
          i^2 = -1 ,
          i^3 = -i ,
          i^4 = 1  ,
          i^5 = i  ...
Ans so on */ 172.69.55.52 09:28, 4 July 2019 (UTC)
What about a "Powers of 2i" documentary? ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 08:59, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Is it a coincidence, that this is selected for comic 271, while 2, 7 and 1 are the first digits of "e", which is also a very common base in Exponentiation? --Lupo (talk) 14:02, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I once remember seeing someone wrongly saying "one to the fourth power" instead of "ten to the fourth power",[citation needed] probably on a show or a movie. I don't remember the name of the show. Edit: It may be cited on Numberphile. --ColorfulGalaxy (talk) 08:59, 13 December 2022 (UTC)