When someone tells me that a thing is so many microns or parsecs across, I am sometimes somewhat at a loss to picture the scale they're referring to, or to relate it to the scales of things familiar to me from other discourses. So here's some information on the scale of things, specifically to make it easier to compare and contrast between different fields of experience. I am probably wrong about some of this – please feel free to correct me !
Each page deals with a particular kind of quantity, measured in its unit within the Système Internationale (SI). I group things by SI quantifier on the standard unit, putting any thing into the group for which its value lies between about 0.1 and about 100, with some arbitrariness near the boundary.
Where practical, I've simply linked to the source for data in relevant pages: but books aren't so amenable to HREFs and there are some sites I've plundered so heavily that it makes sense to mention the site itself here, as distinct from the various links into it where referenced.
The Tragedy of The Moon, ISBN 0 340 19879 6; chapter 10, Down from Amoeba.
From Earth to Heaven, US Library of Congress 66-20967 [1964–1967].
Book of Data (Chemistry, Physical Science, Physics), ISBN 0 582 82672 1.
For visualising large numbers, you might find the MegaPenny project helpful.
Written by Eddy.