A Comparison for the Ages

I watch a lot of science videos on YouTube and Nebula. One of the things that I think every science creator has done is struggle to explain sizes. Yes, the sun is big. It's hard to truly visualize that though. Yeah, it's as big has X many Earths, but how big is the Earth? Those are the easy ones, too. Try comprehending the size of a galaxy or universe. Or go the other way and imagine the size of an Atom!

Now, I don't have an easy solution for this. Humans have always compared the size of things to the size of other things. I mean, going back to space, we have the "Astronomical Unit" which is the average distance from Sun to Earth. That helps in very few instances. Basically just when comparing stuff. Like, oh, Pluto really is that much further away from the sun!

But that's all comparing stuff we mostly can't comprehend with other stuff we can't comprehend and just trying to get close. There are many things we compare to that most people still don't know. That tank holds the same amount as an Olympic size swimming pool? Cool. Is that a lot? How does that relate to my local pool? I'm sure a lot of people have seen an Olympic size swimming pool, but how many actually remember closely enough. I honestly don't know how that size relates to any of the pools I've swam in through life, and I bet most people don't.

As long as two American Football fields> OK. That mostly just helps Americans and even then, only football fans. There is the old meme of Americans using literally anything but the metric system to measure stuff, but I'm not talking measurements. I'm just talking general comparisons.

That's why I love the banana for comparison. Most people know what a banana is and have held one (At least, most people who have the internet and would see that comparison), and even if they don't have one often, they know the general size compared to their fist. Or the size of a school bus. That does raise the question of what length of school bus, but you still get the rough size of an object if someone says it's that big. It gets you in the ballpark and we've all seen a bus.

Of course, you could argue that as long as we can math a size in our daily lives, we don't need to really understand it. I understand that it's about 250km from Saskatoon to Regina and that it takes two and a half hours to drive. I can't see that distance in my mind, but I don't need to. I know enough to use it. I can picture the distance from one side of the road to the other in my mind though. And that's where it's useful. 

What are your most favorite or least favorite measurement comparison? I ask as a man that is 123.2 dick lengths tall (Or dickles as I call them).