ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions. ***************************************************************************** Here at ASTC, I have heard a few great examples of a minor art form in which people try to explain how small, numerous, or large something is by analogy. They invariably start with "if you put [or took]. I would like to start a collection of these short analogies, so please contribute: Here are a few to start From New Scientist: "if you took all the phage particles [like viruses] and stacked them end to end, they would reach for a total distance of 200 million light years." From dinner last night: "if each star was a grain of sand, and you filled a box car with sand, and you did that for many many boxcars, it would take seven years of boxcars of sand passing you, one every five seconds, to make up the total number of stars in the universe." From NISE-net meetings: "If you filled the exploratorium with rats, and every rat touched every other rat every second, that is how fast the molecules in a cell are moving." From Dorothy Parker: "If you laid all the girls at Vassar end to end...I wouldn't be surprised." Others? Eric Siegel esiegel at nyscience dot org *********************************************************************** For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org. Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org. The ISEN-ASTC-L email list is powered by LISTSERVR software from L-Soft. To learn more, visit http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html. To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the message SIGNOFF ISEN-ASTC-L in the BODY of a message to [log in to unmask]