An example of a simile in public discourse about science:
"…these two black holes spiral around each other and gradually come closer and closer and closer – called an inspiral – and you sort of hear this as a note in this gravitational wave, like this ripple passing across the earth. And then as they finally collide they make a single black hole, and what is different about this one is the data is so good you can see the black hole itself wobbling, it's like hitting a bell, you know if you strike a bell, the bell wobbles, and it has various frequencies, and it has harmonics of those, overtones, you can see those in this data, and by modelling those you can start to test more details of general relativity."
Prof. Tim O'Brian (Professor of Astrophysics, University of Manchester)
Prof. Tim O'Brian was talking on an episode of BBC Inside Science
Read about examples of science similes
Many examples of science similes are listed in 'Creative Comparisons: Making Science Familiar through Language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.
