When the threat of the Novel Coronavirus started to rise in Wuhan back in early January, people did not think that it will take the shape of a pandemic as we have now. Why? I hear you ask. Well, it is because of the phrase “exponential growth”. We often hear this term, but do not completely understand it. So, to help people understand the concept and how it triggered the Coronavirus to become a pandemic, a YouTube channel specialising in VFX has made an interesting video.

Folks over at the YouTube channel, Corridor, make some of the best VFX videos on YouTube. Now, they made a video to explain why the COVID-19 took everyone by surprise using some creative visual examples.

In the video (below), the creators gave two cool examples to explain the concept of “exponential growth”. Mathematically speaking, exponents are superscripts of numbers that specify to which power a particular number should be raised.

Now, the first example that the creators provided involved sheets of paper increasing exponentially. They started off with two sheets of paper and asked viewers how many sheets would they have if they had 2 to the power 100 (2^100) sheets of paper. The number 2^100 looks quite small on paper, however, you would be actually surprised to find the answer to that. Let me give you a hint. If you stack 2^30 sheets of paper, you’ll reach the Moon!

In another example, the creators asked the question “How long would it take for a water droplet (contains approximately 0.05ml) that doubles every minute to fill up the Grand Canyon?”. Well, we know that this water droplet will fill up the entire area of Grand Canyon eventually. However, if you are thinking that it will take years to achieve that feat, think again!

So, these examples surely opened my mind and well, shocked me a little bit too. However, now I understand why the Novel Coronavirus became a pandemic in almost no time. The world governments were too slow to act on it or even understand it before it grew exponentially, took over the world and changed it for the worse. Ah! How I wish the governments listened to Bill when he warned us about this 5 years back.

So, you can check out the video above or go to Corridor’s YouTube channel to check out all their cool VFX videos.