nuclear
"Nuclear energy is like grilling in the garden over a pile of hot lava. Works great, that is if you don't mind how difficult and expensive hot lava is, or the occasional explosion that takes out the entire neighborhood, or the fact that what's tipped into the dust bin will be lethal for thousands of years. Otherwise, enjoy your steak!
"Nuclear energy is like fire, a good servant but a bad master."
"He told her that to people in Japan nuclear energy is like Godzilla. It's a beast. But they believe they've tamed it. So there's no need to panic."
"Nuclear energy is like Shaquille O'Neal on a playground basketball court. No one who is already playing the Great Game as an energy supplier can win if they let atomic energy compete without heavy restrictions "
"Nuclear energy is like a razor-sharp knife-it can be used for both good and bad. This knife can save several lives through surgery, or can end a single life through murder. The U.S. is saying that if Iran has this sharp knife, it will use it for murder; but if America has it, it will be used for good. They cannot think of Iran using the knife as a doctor, but instead as a murderer. We don't want nuclear energy for war, we want to use it for positive results."
"Someone said that nuclear fusion is like to put the sun in a box. But right now we don't know how to make the box."
"Nuclear fusion is like high velocity atom smashers or manned space flight: it eats government science budgets"
"Nuclear fusion is like hitting a bottle full of nitroglycerin and hitting it with a hammer you only have to put little bit of energy in but you a ton make the problem is harnessing that energy being released."
"Nuclear fusion is like mountains. It take a lot more power to lift the ball over the next mountain top, but the distance to the bottom is massive and the return on your effort is equally massive, much more than the fission hills."
"continuing this analogy, one can say that the nuclear forces are like the van der Waals forces that hold these atoms together in a liquid droplet (liquid helium, neon, ...). This analogy is confirmed by the relative smallness of the nuclear forces: the binding energy of the protons and neutrons in the nucleus is of the order of 10-20 MeV - very large compared to chemical energies (electron volts), but small compared to mpc2 = 940 MeV. "
This is wrong. They are not like tentacles. The paper is a list of science concepts that students had misconception about. The central problem outlined in the paper is that these mis-formed ideas are learned in the lower grades and cared on through the students' career.
"Building a nuclear reactor is like building a house without a toilet and telling the owner you'll figure out where to put the s-t in a few years, except that human excrement is at least fertilizer, while nuclear waste is some of the longest-lasting, most insidiously deadly poison ever created, and for which there is STILL no effective means of disposal. I fear your blind faith in the "Technium" misses most of these inconvenient truths. "
"a nuclear reactor is like a woman.. ...you just have to read the manual, and press all the right buttons. "
"A nuclear reactor is like a high-performance sports car built to go 600 miles per hour in a world where the speed limit is 60. To run it safely, you'd need to keep one foot on the brake pedal--all the time. (And "game over" if the brakes fail.)"
"A nuclear reactor is like any other type of technology - it will malfunction badly if you don't design and operate it right. The same is true of hydroelectric dams, but one thing that makes them different is the absolute worst case senerio for a reactor failure is nowhere near as bad as a dam failure."
"A nuclear reactor is like the mitochondria because the nuclear reactor powers the ship just like the mitochondria powers the cell."
"Also a nuclear reactor is not like a light bulb you cannot just "switch off" a reactor when things go wrong, it is a lengthy process to "shutdown" a nuclear reactor making it very hazardous to work with. This then means that a nuclear reactor is like a childs bicycle fitted with a Ferrari Enzo V12 engine totally unnecessary, over powered, overkill, stupid and riddiculous this is the most apt metaphor for a nuclear reactor to really put this into layman perspective. "
"Neutron radiation is different. Neutrons are big enough to knock atoms out of balance and kick out another neutron and destabilize them. Neutron radiation is the key to why nuclear power works. One neutron hits another neutron sometimes with enough energy to kick out some electrons and more than one neutron. In elements like Uranium where there are big huge numbers of neutrons, you could create a chain reaction. That's all nuclear fission is, like a bowling ally infinite loop that creates bowling balls. Collisions and collisions."
"if you think nuclear is the best option from fossil fuels then read this book. Its amazing how much can go wrong in such a short amount of time. Nuclear fission is like a sleeping viper, seems calm but when something goes wrong the bite is horribly painful and deadly."
" Nuclear weapons are like an understanding between the athlete and the bully: You don't screw with me and I won't screw with you. It's a way for the two biggest kids on the block to communicate with each other in no uncertain terms. That Trump allegedly believes that nukes are solutions to low-intensity "
" Nuclear weapons are like liquid nitrogen for a geopolitical situation: they freeze wars in their tracks, and can keep conflicts preserved for decades. Introducing nuclear weapons allows the author to be more creative with the geopolitical situation of his world, particularly with regard to ideology, while being ..."
"The nuclear membrane is like a wiffle ball because it has holes all over it just like the nuclear membrane has pores. (The focus here is only on structure and had nothing to do with function.)"
"The Nuclear Membrane is like the middle blocker because they control what gets to the nucleus. "
This structure is a double lipid bi-layer that surrounds the nucleus. One way to think of a mammalian cell is as a Russian nesting doll with three dolls. The these particular cell are 3-dimensional structures encapsulated inside each other.
"A nuclear explosion is like bringing a piece of the Sun to the Earth's surface for a ... of the stratosphere would enhance the chemical reactions that destroy ozone ..."
"The weak nuclear force is like a reclusive and slightly weird uncle, who keeps to himself(in this case, the atomic nucleus) and who has only one party trick (in this making the nuclui decay by radioactivity"
"Weak nuclear force is like a puppy that changes the flavor of quarks.
Strong nuclear force is like a puppy that ensures the stability of matter.
Electromagnetism is like a puppy that determines the properties of matter.
Gravitation is like a puppy that attracts matter to matter. "
"While it's yet to be mathematically/experimentally proven, it's possible that the weak nuclear force is like a bit generator (i.e. a generator of new lattice points in space-time and in phase-space) that causes space-time to expand irreversibly."
METAMIA is a free database of analogy and metaphor. Anyone can contribute or search. The subject matter can be anything. Science is popular, but poetry is encouraged. The goal is to integrate our fluid muses with the stark literalism of a relational database. Metamia is like a girdle for your muses, a cognitive girdle.