Imagine a ruler with all floating point values on it, each time the mantissa comes at its maximum, you increase the exponent, so the space between farther float

Imagine a ruler with all floating point values on it, each time the mantissa comes at its maximum, you increase the exponent, so the space between farther float values doubles. The number of mantissa values being constant for each exponent value, the exponent describes some kind of "zoom level". Float values on a ruler would sort of looks like this: ... x x x x x x x x x x... ^ exponent increases, spacings are doubled