An example of an analogy used in popular science writing:
"…imagine that instead of large numbers of air molecules moving with different energies, there are crowds of jostling people with different numbers of coins in their pockets. Individuals in the crowd move in random directions but only advance one or two paces before bumping into another person. In this analogy, a fast molecule with many energy units is represented by a person with a large number of coins, a slow one by a person with a small number. A hot oven in a cool room can thus be seen as a small group of rich people bunched together in the corner of a large room full of much poorer ones.
Continuing the analogy, the equivalent of the temperature of of each of the two groups is the average of wealth of its members. Some individuals in each group are richer or poorer than the average, just as with gases of two different temperatures some particles are moving quicker or slower than the average,. The equivalent of a fast molecule bumping into a slow molecule and losing some of its energy is a rich person bumping into a poor person and handing over some of his coins, making the rich person poorer and the poor person richer…."
Paul Sen (2022) Einstein's Fridge. The science of fire, ice and the universe. William Collins.
Read examples of scientific analogies
