To clarify:

The point is that a few orders of magnitude can be visualized / grasped just by adding another step to the ladder, chopping off only as large a step as you can take at a time.

Then even a whole lotta orders of magnitude just become a short sequence of steps, going off of concepts you find more familiar.

I often start with 10^3 as "number of students in my high school", I have a distinct image of some school photo in the school yard where everyone was on there. After that e.g. the number of images (each showing one yard-full of students) ... (read more)