An analogy used in public communication of science:
"Sometimes I like to think of, you know, COVID as a fire, if we are the fuel, social mixing is the oxygen that allows the fuel to burn, vaccines the water that stops the fuel from burning, and COVID cases are the sparks that spread the fire. So, we are doing well on vaccines, but there's lots of dried wood left.
…the key thing is the human discussion with somebody who has COVID to identify who their contacts are and to ask them to isolate as well, and that really stops those sparks getting into the population and really helps to dampen down the fire."
Prof. Andrew Hayward
Prof. Andrew Hayward, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Inclusion Health Research at UCL was being interviewed on the radio.
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An example of trying to explain a phenomenon at a scale well beyond normal human experience:
"If you think of our Sun as a tennis ball in size, the star that formed [supernova 19]87a was about as big as the London Eye. So it's a very massive star.
The pressure and density right in the centre of that star is phenomenal. So it creates this really, really, compact core. A teaspoon of this material, of a neutron star, weighs about as much as Everest. So, it's a very dense, very heavy core that is left behind."
Dr. Olivia Jones
Dr. Olivia Jones (UK Astronomy Techmology Center) was being interviewed on a episode ('Largest ever covid safety study') of Science in Action.
An analogy between molecules and clothing:
"[Louis Pasteur] was the first to show that [some] organic compounds exist in mirror-image forms at the molecular level; that is molecules have the property of handedness, or chirality. The term is based on the Geek word for hand, which is appropriate because hands are the most common [everyday*] examples of mirror-image forms. Not only molecules, but also ordinary objects can be described as chiral or achiral. For example, gloves are chiral, but socks are achiral, because a sock can be worn equally well on a right or left foot."
Royston M. Roberts (1989) Serendipity. Accidental discoveries in science
In this analogy, familiar gloves and socks act as the analogues to explain the target conceps of chiral molecules and achiral molecules.
* The statement, "hands are the most common examples of mirror-image forms", exhibits anthropocentrism, in the sense that chiral molecules are far, far more common than hands.
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Prof. Ruth Morgan (Professor of Crime and Forensic Sciences, UCL) describes the processes of science as analgous to undertaking a jigsaw puzzle
"That's the story of science, isn't it.
And I guess it is a bit like having a jigsaw puzzle. And you're working on that jigsaw puzzle. And then you start realising that actually there are an awful lot of pieces in front of you that actually aren't part of your puzzle, they are parts of different puzzles and you don't actually have all the pieces of the puzzle you are trying to make, so at the very best you are going to build a picture that's got quite a few different holes in it. And it's the art of bringing all these different insights together so that you are able to make inferences about what's going on even though you don't have the complete picture."
Prof. Ruth Morgan speaking on an episode of BBC Inside Science