Trivia6 min read
How Big Is Big Ben, Really? Size Comparisons That Break Your Brain
Is Big Ben taller than the Statue of Liberty? 14 real size comparisons of landmarks, animals, rockets and planets that will break your sense of scale.
Quick question: which is taller, Big Ben or the Statue of Liberty? Most people pick Lady Liberty. She's huge in photos, she stands on an island, and she has a torch held high. But she's slightly shorter.
Our brains are surprisingly bad at size. We see almost everything on the same six-inch screen, framed to fill it, with nothing next to it for scale. So here are 14 real size comparisons that tend to break people's intuition. Every number comes from the object data in our size-comparison game, Scale It!, where each object has a real size, a fact and a piece of trivia.
1. Big Ben vs the Statue of Liberty
Big Ben: 96 m. Statue of Liberty: 93 m to the tip of the torch.
Strictly speaking, Big Ben is the bell. The tower that houses it, Elizabeth Tower, rises 96 m on a 12 m square base. The Statue of Liberty reaches 93 m from the ground to her torch, but the copper statue alone is 46 m. The rest is pedestal and foundation.
Bonus trivia: the clock is fine-tuned with old pennies on its pendulum. Each one changes its timekeeping by 0.4 seconds a day.
2. The Space Shuttle vs the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Shuttle launch stack: 56.1 m. Leaning Tower of Pisa: 56.7 m.
Stand the Space Shuttle, fuel tank and boosters, next to the Leaning Tower (measured on its high side) and they're within 60 cm of each other. The tower started tilting in 1178, while it was still being built.
3. The International Space Station vs the Saturn V
ISS: 109 m across its solar arrays. Saturn V: 110.6 m tall.
Lay the Apollo Moon rocket on its side next to the space station and they're almost exactly the same length. The ISS spans about the length of an American football field, and it circles Earth every 90 minutes, so its crew sees about 16 sunrises a day.
4. The Saturn V vs Big Ben
Saturn V: 110.6 m. Big Ben: 96 m.
The rocket that took astronauts to the Moon was nearly 15 m taller than Elizabeth Tower and about 18 m taller than the Statue of Liberty. Its first stage burned through about 2,000 tonnes of fuel and oxygen in two and a half minutes.
5. A superjumbo jet, the Taj Mahal and the Great Sphinx
Superjumbo: 72.7 m long. Taj Mahal: 73 m tall. Great Sphinx: 73 m long.
Three very different things, nearly one measurement. And here's the twist: the biggest double-deck airliner has wings spanning 79.8 m, so it's wider than it is long.
6. A cruise ship vs the Eiffel Tower
Biggest cruise ships: about 365 m long. Eiffel Tower: 330 m tall.
Stand one of the largest cruise ships on its end and it would top the Eiffel Tower, antennas included. The largest container ships go further still, at 400 m, longer than the Empire State Building's roof is high (381 m).
7. The Burj Khalifa: two and a half Eiffel Towers
Burj Khalifa: 828 m. Eiffel Tower: 330 m.
The world's tallest building is about two and a half Eiffel Towers stacked. The world's tallest tower, Tokyo Skytree, reaches 634 m. That number is a pun: 6-3-4 can be read "Mu-sa-shi", the old name of the Tokyo region.
8. A giraffe vs a double-decker bus
Big male giraffe: 5.5 m. London-style double-decker: 4.4 m.
A tall giraffe could look over the roof of a double-decker bus. Its neck can be 2.4 m long, yet it has just seven vertebrae, the same number as yours. For the record, a classic inflatable wacky tube man (about 6.1 m with its fan) beats them both.
9. A blue whale vs a T. rex
Blue whale: about 25 m. T. rex: 12.3 m.
The famous T. rex specimen Sue measures 12.3 m from snout to tail. A typical adult blue whale is about two Sues, nose to tail. Even Megalodon, estimated at about 16 m, falls well short. And T. rex lived closer in time to us than to Stegosaurus.
10. Quetzalcoatlus: a reptile as wide as a plane
Quetzalcoatlus wingspan: about 10.5 m.
This giant pterosaur had an estimated wingspan as wide as a small four-seat aeroplane. On the ground, it stood about as tall as a giraffe and likely hunted small prey on foot, a bit like a stork.
11. A polar bear vs a basketball hoop
Big male polar bear standing up: about 3 m. Basketball rim: 3.05 m.
A large polar bear rearing up on its hind legs would stand almost level with a regulation basketball rim. Meanwhile, a big male ostrich stands about 2.7 m tall, well above a seven-foot (2.13 m) basketball center.
12. The bee hummingbird vs the garden ant
Bee hummingbird: 5.5 cm. Garden ant: 5 mm.
The smallest bird on Earth is only eleven ants long, bill to tail, and only a little longer than a golf ball is wide (4.27 cm). It weighs about 2 g, lives only in Cuba, and lays eggs about the size of a coffee bean.
13. Earth, Jupiter and the Sun
Earth: 12,742 km. Jupiter: 142,984 km. Sun: about 1.39 million km.
Eleven Earths fit across Jupiter. About 109 Earths fit across the Sun, which means the Sun is nearly ten Jupiters wide. Going the other way, the Moon is a little more than a quarter of Earth's width.
14. A neutron star vs Mount Everest
Neutron star: about 24 km across. Everest: 8,849 m high.
A neutron star is the crushed core of a dead star. It's only about as wide as three Everests stacked end to end (a little less, in fact), yet it's heavier than the entire Sun. A teaspoon of its matter would weigh billions of tonnes on Earth.
Bonus round: everything in bananas
Scale It!'s Zen mode lets you measure in metric, imperial or bananas (a typical banana is about 18 cm). Some conversions:
| Object | Real size | In bananas |
|---|---|---|
| Ladder fire truck | 10 m long | About 56 |
| Blue whale | 25 m long | About 139 |
| Statue of Liberty | 93 m tall | About 517 |
| Eiffel Tower | 330 m tall | About 1,833 |
Why our brains get these wrong
A few habits trip us up:
- No reference in the frame. Photos of landmarks are framed to fill the picture, so a 50 m arch and a 300 m tower can look the same size.
- Fame feels big. Iconic things take up a lot of space in our heads, so we assume they take up a lot of space in the world.
- We remember the whole, not the parts. We picture the Statue of Liberty as one figure and forget that half her height is pedestal.
- Extremes don't fit in our heads. Past a certain point, "very big" and "unimaginably big" feel the same, which is why the Sun and Jupiter blur together.
The fix is comparison: put two things side by side at true scale and your eye suddenly gets it.
Test your eye with Scale It!
That's the whole idea behind Scale It!. Two objects appear side by side: one at its true size, the other at the wrong size. Drag, pinch and fine-tune the target until the pair matches real life, then hit SCALE IT! and watch the tape measure reveal how close you got. Hit 70% accuracy for one star, 85% for two, and 95% for three and a PIXEL PERFECT.
There are 127 objects in 8 packs, from atoms to the Sun, across 7 worlds of 12 levels each. When you've finished the campaign, try Endless Streak, play the Daily Scale Challenge against a global leaderboard, relax in Zen mode, or take on AI rivals, a friend on the same device, or players online in Duel mode.
So: is a T. rex longer than a fire truck? Grab the tape measure and find out in Scale It!.
