Visualize the Deepwater oil spil over your hometown

http://www.beowulfe.com/oil/

by gcr • 16 years ago

113 23 16 years ago

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.

mildavw• 16 years ago

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.

gcr• 16 years ago

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...

stdan27• 16 years ago

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

Confusion• 16 years ago

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

alex_c• 16 years ago

Enough to cover one of the Great Lakes.

Charming.

electromagnetic• 16 years ago

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.

jz• 16 years ago

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.

spot• 16 years ago

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

btucker• 16 years ago

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.

rodion_89• 16 years ago

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.

bena• 16 years ago

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"

jbrennan• 16 years ago

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

If only.

mortenjorck• 16 years ago

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.

aquateen• 16 years ago

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

JoachimSchipper• 16 years ago

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

nostromo2• 16 years ago

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

angstrom• 16 years ago

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.

nostromo2• 16 years ago

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

statenjason• 16 years ago

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

felideon• 16 years ago

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

s-phi-nl• 16 years ago

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

EvanK• 16 years ago

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

Visualize the Deepwater oil spil over your hometown

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