Metaphors, Analogies, and Scaling Schemata
How do antibiotics work?
Pretend your body is a castle. You have skin, which would be your castle walls. Let’s say you cut yourself, or in the case of your castle, a piece of your castle wall breaks. Invaders (pathogens) attack from an opposing kingdom and they would love to invade your castle and take everything. These invaders figure out that a piece of your castle wall is broken and takes this opportunity to send their knights into your castle. Your castle also has knights to defend your castle. Your knights and the opposing kingdom’s knights fight. It’s a pretty even fight. Now, you take antibiotics to help your cut heal faster. By taking antibiotics, you are essentially giving your knights better weapons. Previously, your knights were fighting the enemy knights with swords. It was sword-to-sword combat. Now, some of your knights have crossbows to help kill the opposing knights. The opposing knights do not know how to deal with crossbows! The better weapons help, and you begin driving your invaders out of your castle, to help you heal faster.
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How does antibiotic resistance work?
Continuing with the metaphor above, you keep taking antibiotics and it definitely helped your knights with the battle. In the beginning of the battle, it is very easy to kill the opposing kingdom’s knights, but they keep sending in more knights! They really want to take everything from your castle. The opposing kingdom is determined to win. The knights they send need armor and the opposing kingdom’s blacksmiths are making armor as quickly as they can! They’re trying their best to stick to how the knight’s armor is supposed to be made but sometimes, they make a mistake. Some of their knights receive thick armor by mistake. They go into battle with your knights regardless and surprisingly, they are not killed in battle! They survive the fight and go back to the blacksmith. They tell the blacksmith what happened. Some of the knights say, “Hey blacksmith, your thicker armor saved me from the crossbow fire! We have to make thicker armor now!” As more and more blacksmiths hear the news of what happened, more and more blacksmiths start making thicker and thicker armor to protect the knights. More knights survive and it becomes easier to invade your castle! Your antibiotics–or crossbows–do not work on these new knights anymore.
Blood vessels are the highways of a body.
If blood vessels are the highways in the United States, then red blood cells are ‘trucks’ that drive on it. Red blood cells carry different nutrients to different parts of the body, just as trucks carry different goods to different states. Your cells need these nutrients that they cannot produce themselves, much like the way some states do not do a good job of producing food for themselves. They need to get food shipped to survive (e.g, Alaska)! White blood cells serve as highway patrol. They patrol the highways and make sure everything is in order. When they hear an emergency, they rush to the emergency and deal with it. Platelets are like highway repairmen (e.g, Caltrans). They make sure your highway is fully functional and the roads are not broken!
If a cell is a kingdom, then…
The cell membrane are the kingdom walls. The membrane ‘wall’ controls who gets in and who gets out. It also provides structure to your kingdom and protection.
The mitochondria, colloquially known as “the power house of the cell,” are the farmers who till the land. They provide food, or energy, for your kingdom. Without food, a kingdom will surely not survive.
The nucleus is the king. He makes the decisions and rules your kingdom.
The ribosomes are the workers who produce things, such as the blacksmiths, weavers, fishermen, etc. They provide things that your kingdom needs to function.
The vacuoles are the storage mills in a kingdom. They simply store things.
How fast is the speed of light? The speed of light is 299,792 kilometers per second. If you traveled at the speed of light, you would be able to travel around the world 7.48 times in a single second. The average duration for a blink of an eye is 0.1 to 0.4 seconds. If someone traveled at the speed of light, by the time you blinked, the person would be able to travel around the world almost 3 times!
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How tall is the tallest mountain in the world? The tallest mountain in the world is Mount Everest at 29,029 feet. The average human male height in the world is 5 feet 6 inches. Imagine stacking men on top of each other until they reach the height of Mount Everest. It would take 5,278 men, stacked on top of each other, to reach the top of Mount Everest!