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Posted by eatonphil 12/10/2025

Size of Life(neal.fun)
2619 points | 277 commentspage 2
the-mitr 12/11/2025|
One of the books that got me introduced to this fascinating aspect of our natural world is John Tyler Bonner's Size and Cycle. It has features amazing log-log plots of how different organisms from grow with time: from eggs to full-grown organisms. This kind of visualisation gives you a different perspective on growth and scale

For example, Sequoia gigantea Sequoia is the largest tree and can be effectively compared to the annual plant shown above. Fertilization and the early growth to the seed stage are essentially similar, but because of the cambium and the possibility of secondary thickening, the size of the tree can increase enormously. As can be seen from Figure 1 in the text, the sequoia does not begin to set seed until it is sixty years old and eighty meters tall.

https://postimg.cc/hfdGGJ8H

smallerfish 12/10/2025||
I like it, but the switch from metric to inches is confusing, and I think introduces a bug - there's no way a sea snail is 5-6 neurons high.
robotresearcher 12/10/2025||
Some of your neurons stretch from your brain to your big toe. 1.5m, or more in a tall person.
yesitcan 12/10/2025|||
There's no way a tardigrade is half a sea snail.
smallerfish 12/10/2025|||
Correct, but not the one on the site.
Mogzol 12/10/2025||
You can change the units in the top corner. It defaults to metric for me, but if your browser language is "en-US" you get imperial by default.
runtimepanic 12/10/2025||
Tools like this are surprisingly effective for teaching, especially compared to static diagrams. Interaction makes the scale differences stick.
abustamam 12/10/2025||
When my daughter is old enough, I'm definitely going to show her a bunch of visualizations on Neal's site as supplementary education. I learned so much from these visualizations as an adult, and even without being able to read you can get a sense of scale.
mncharity 12/11/2025|||
> When my daughter is old enough

Fwiw, I've done a pinch-nail-hand-arms 1-10-100-1000 mm "body as size reference" a couple of times around 5ish. And a 1000x "micro view" "pinch is zoomed to arms size" "it's like a scale model or doll playset - everything zoomed together" world of "bacteria sprinkles, red blood cell candies (M&M minis or concave Smarties minis or Sweetarts - there's lots of cell candy analogs), hair poles, salt/sugar boxes". Stories of sitting on a grain of salt and eating... etc; pet eyelash mites. No idea if it actually worked.

I did some user-test videos, now only on archive.org.[1] Hmm... the "Arms, hands" video there now doesn't seem to play inline? - but does wget'ed and browsered. :/

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20221007220513/www.clarifyscienc...

abustamam 12/12/2025||
Hey that's cool! I like that idea
runtimepanic 12/10/2025|||
Totally agree! Even as adults, the sense of scale hits differently when you interact with it. Your daughter will probably love discovering it too.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 12/10/2025||
I felt like I was at a museum exhibit. It is fantastic.
catoc 12/11/2025||
No.fun in the cookie dialogue. Had to click 26 (sic!) switches to opt out of being tracked.
miramba 12/11/2025||
It is encouraging to know that I am not the only one who does that (sometimes, on interesting sites. otherwise I just leave).
catoc 12/11/2025|||
I would have definitely left normally. Just wanted to see the site.

And I know this also likely not Neil's idea of fun, and mostly the silly EU rules that are to blame but still, dialogs without a directly available "refuse all" are the worst

kunley 12/11/2025|||
Yes, you are not the only one.
lionkor 12/11/2025|||
Consent-O-matic works fantastically to select exactly what you want.
N-Krause 12/11/2025|||
uBlock seemed to have handled it for me.
kunley 12/11/2025||
Not on mobile..
gl-prod 12/11/2025||
Firefox on mobile can install ublock
fortyseven 12/11/2025||
On Firefox mobile with unblock, here. Experienced nothing intrusive. It works, apparently. :)
qn9n 12/11/2025||
Honestly I don't really see cookie banners anymore because I have a dismiss feature built into my ad blocker.
catoc 12/11/2025||
Always afraid that auto dismiss results in auto allow-all on thus type of dialog.
bariswheel 12/10/2025||
The music is so moving, tear inducing. One of the best links I've seen posted here and I've been here 15+ years. Well done Neal. I wish credit was given to the music, anyone know who created it?
hypertexthero 12/10/2025||
The following from clicking on the i on the top-right after starting the show:

> Created by Neal Agarwal

> Illustrations by Julius Csotonyi

> Production by Liz Ryan

> Music & SFX by Aleix Ramon

> Cello performance by Iratxe Ibaibarriaga

Beautiful work.

gizmo385 12/10/2025||
If you click the "i" info button in the top right, it'll list the full credits, including those who worked on the music.
vinhnx 12/11/2025||
> Human: A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.

Thanks for the laugh!

ronbenton 12/11/2025|
Going to make this my LinkedIn headline
hmokiguess 12/10/2025||
This was awesome! Also, I couldn't stop my child brain from anticipating "your mom" at the end.
Jordan-117 12/10/2025||
Reminds me of the classic Scale of the Universe flash toy by Cary Huang (now available in HTML 5!):

https://htwins.net/scale2/

chakintosh 12/11/2025||
> Human A highly social, relatively hairless bipedal ape that was once a nomadic hunter-gatherer, but has adapted to create websites.
pazimzadeh 12/11/2025|
This has DNA as the smallest object and has a large protein next to it, so it misses the fact that a gene's DNA is almost always larger by weight and volume than the protein it encodes.
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