An example of an analogy drawing on a medical concept:
"Research has revealed common alternative conceptions likely to interfere with learning of target knowledge across a diverse range of topics, and this has led to the development of instruments to support teachers. There are concept inventories for broad teaching topics or more specific instruments to diagnose more particular aspects of learner thinking. Individual learners may also present with less common, sometimes idiosyncratic thinking, that is unlikely to be addressed in available diagnostic tools. Although some of these specific ideas may be quite rare, the phenomenon itself (i.e., of learners developing their own individual ideas at odds with target knowledge) is common. This is somewhat analogous to the situation in medicine, where there are both common diseases found with high incidence among populations and rare diseases that affect far fewer individuals. Yet, there are so many different rare diseases (many thousands) that it is not uncommon for a person to suffer from a rare disease."
Read examples of scientific analogies
Many examples of science analogies are listed in 'Creative comparisons: Making science familiar through language. An illustrative catalogue of figurative comparisons and analogies for science concepts'. Free Download.
