Visualize the Deepwater oil spil over your hometown | Hacker News Reader

Visualize the Deepwater oil spil over your hometown

beowulfe.com

113 pointsgcr25 comments

Cross-posted from here: http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/comments/c8nji/i_made_an_oil_spill_map_visualizer_tool/

Move the oil spill over your hometown to get a better sense of its magnitude.

This is actually a great way to visualize the size of pretty much anything within the scale range of 10^-1 to 10^2 miles across. Nothing humanizes a distance more than seeing it directly in comparison to what you experience every day.

Why didn't you type "1/10 to 100 miles"?

I think it's related to the great "powers of 10" film; see http://www.powersof10.com/.

If only there were some giant atomic furnace beaming us down energy from above, maybe this wouldn't happen.

If only.

For anyone in the UK, this is more like "Visualise the Deepwater oil spill over your part of the country"

Or in the case of smaller countries like NL: visualize the oil spill over half your country.

Enough to cover one of the Great Lakes.

Charming.

Interestingly enough the geolocation based off my IP actually puts me and virtually everywhere important around me (at least important to me) in the clear spots in the middle.

Perspective = epic fail.

I thought the exact opposite. I'm in Chicago and the spill covers a 1/3 to 1/2 of Lake Michigan. After zooming out though, it clearly would cover Lake Erie or Lake Ontario. The thing that was put in perspective for me was the shear size of the Atlantic.

Isn't this a knockoff of http://paulrademacher.com/oilspill/ ?

Well the concept of projecting something onto a non-native locale for comparison purposes is not exactly groundbreaking. So I'm not sure it really matters which came first.

Call me "old fashioned", but I actually find the simpler Google Maps based visualization more effective in conveying the scale.

that one tells me that the google earth plugin is only for windows and mac, so its no good for me and some others here.

I actually thought it was bigger... (perhaps from all the coverage) so I guess for me this website is relatively good news.

Isn't this just the tip of the iceberg? Much of it is in a suspend emulsion that doesn't neccessarily match the surface outline.

Maybe. Regular oil floats to the surface. I'm not sure about all this crude however.

It floats.

Until it forms into little tarballs, and then sinks below the surface of the water. Combined with the "safe" dispersant BP is using to thin the oil, it helps the whole sinking process go faster.

The size of this overlay is more so a depiction of the "core" spill. The slick above and below water extends to a much larger area, and also moves around daily.

You might want a label on your form field. I wasn't sure what to put in there to move the spill. "Location:" would work.

oh, I didn't make this, but I should have cited my source. Sorry.

Cross-posted from here: http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/comments/c8nji/i_made...

I live in Houston, so I don't have to visualize...It IS sort of over my hometown.

Does anyone know what causes the big clear spots in the middle?

Hey, I very nearly don't have to imagine it. I can practically live it. :D

Type in Houma, LA, USA in the box next to "Move the Spill"

Wow, it would cover all of South Florida and reach to the Bahamas. (Enter Miami, FL to visualize.)

Covers the Great Salt Lake, and most of the upper corner of Utah.

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