An example of an everyday comparison used to explain a more abstract idea:
"One hydrogen bomb would be sufficient to wipe out the whole of London. But compared with a supernova a hydrogen bomb is the merest trifle. For a supernova is equal in violence to about a million million million million hydrogen bombs all going off at the same time."
Fred Hoyle (1960) The Nature of the Universe (Revised ed.)
Whilst, thankfully, a hydrogen bomb is not an everyday phenomenon, Hoyle uses a well-known city to offer a scale for thinking about a supernova explosion.
Read about quotidian comparisons
A document listing a wide range of examples of science analogies, similes, metaphors and other comparisons, drawn from diverse sources, can be downloaded using this link: 'Creative Comparisons: Making Science Familiar through Language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts.'
