Sometimes all kids need is a scientifically literate adult to explain precisely why their fear isn’t possible.
Splitting Hairs, Splitting Atoms
Submitted 3 weeks ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/69ba3763-46f7-4b17-978e-0c156382e51b.jpeg
Comments
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
Frozengyro@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yea, just tell them they and the surrounding half mile would be instantly vaporized and wouldn’t even know they were dead.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
“It hasn’t happened yet and you damn sure aren’t special enough to be the one to do it”
icelimit@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
It happens all the time. That’s how the multiverse branches are kept under a manageable number for the simulation.
EvilBit@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Reminds me of a profoundly stupid movie I saw as a child called Young Einstein starring Yahoo Serious and no that’s not aphasia talking. He takes an atom out to the shed and splits it with a chisel. An explosion ensues, complete with charred face and smoking hair standing on end.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
profoundly stupid
Hey, that was my favourite movie when it came out.
EvilBit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t equate “profoundly stupid” to “bad”. I enjoy a good stupid movie. I adore Hudson Hawk. I watch Ready Player One all the time in the background.
ameancow@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I had no exposure to school or formal education when I was real young. I just had a few picture books about the world, one was a cut-away that showed the layers of earth’s crust, mantle and core.
Being about 5, I had no idea of the proportions or scales involved so whenever I saw someone digging a hole outside for a firepit or fencepost I would yell and scream that they were going to break through to lava and it would pour everywhere and burn everything up.
Nobody was able to explain things to me so I had to self-educate myself about science and everything else over the next couple decades.
_stranger_@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I loved this story, thank you for sharing.
I think the people who sleep well at night are the ones that don’t care how anything works. Sometimes it’s ignorance, but often it’s just burnout, and worse sometimes it’s a complete lack of empathy for anything that isn’t themselves.
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
A single atom wouldn’t even be worse than, like, a pop rock anyway.
icelimit@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
If I accidentally bite an atom and the tiny shards shatters nearby atoms, wouldn’t that just make more? Like sort of… a chain reaction ?
Kolanaki@pawb.social 3 weeks ago
I think your jaw would have to be made of tungsten or something for that to happen, but I’m not a physicist. 🤷♂️
TriplePlaid@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
It would not make a chain reaction because the nuclei of typical atoms are unlikely to split when irradiated (that is to say, hit by the pieces of the original atom that split) and will more likely ionize (have an electron knocked off) or transmute (turn into a different element by changing the number of protons).
In nuclear weapons or reactors the uranium must be “enriched” because regular uranium atoms are too stable to sustain a fission reaction. We must have a high amount of rare uranium-235 (the easily splittable isotope) compared to U-238 (the more common stabler isotope) which is why uranium needs to be enriched. Most of the atoms in your salad are stable isotopes, so there will likely not be any cascading fission reactions even if your teeth were somehow able to trigger one (or even 1000) every single time you took a bite.
riskable@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Atoms lettuce break the iceberg.
moakley@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
When I learned about germs, how they’re everywhere and too small to see, I thought I must be squishing them every time I touch anything. So I went around the entire house touching every surfaces, especially the windows, because nobody ever touched those.
Stonewyvvern@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Learned about Vacuum Decay when I was 10…it gave me another complex layered on top of my other complex layer cake…
rumba@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
yeah my poor dyson /s
Seriously though, the best part about vacuum decay is you’d never see it coming and barely have time to notice if it did happen.
Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
NOO BILLL
WHYYY
EVAPORATES INTO ASH
Cossty@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
When I was a kid, I was playing one day outside and then later I realized there is an ant nest nearby and I saw that I killed some ants by walking near it.
After that, I didn’t want to kill any more bugs etc, so whenever I was walking on grass, I would always check the grass before me to see if there are any bugs in it, and only then I would make a step. Yeah, it was very slow and inefficient, but it wasn’t that bad because I was actively avoiding grass and this whole experiment didn’t last very long either, maybe a couple of months. Then I went back to stepping on the bugs.DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
Just tell yourself they’d kill you if they had the chance, it’s a preemptive strike
AquaTofana@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I remember being told “Atoms are always moving”, so I would cut reeeeaaaalllllyyyy fucking slow for a bit thinking that the atoms would “move out of the way.”
I also just read my husband this meme and he was like “Oh yeah. I remember thinking I was risking my area for arts and crafts.”
redsand@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
If you did manage to do this by random chance would you even notice? A single atom is pretty small. If you somehow split a random carbon atom in lettuce wouldn’t you get less than a Joule as long as it doesn’t somehow chain?
Bubs@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
This is just what I’ve heard a long time ago so don’t quote me lol. But no, splitting a single atom shouldn’t do anything of note. I believe it’s the same general reason that a nuke doesn’t set the entire atmosphere on fire - you need a lot of energy to split atoms. That’s why nukes need enriched materials.
I also believe that even a nuclear explosion won’t be triggered by a single split atom in a bomb. For example, the Manhattan Project bomb was triggered by shaped explosives that surrounded the nuclear core. The blast of the charges “compressed” the nuclear material to the point it reached a critical mass that allowed a runaway fission reaction.
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Yeah it would be small to the point of not being perceptible. A single atom has an insane amount of energy for its size, but its still not enough to move a grain of sand any amount that would be perceptible
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yep was super paranoid and anxious over misunderstandings now just super paranoid and anxious over worst case unlikely scenarios.
edgesmash@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
What kid wants to eat salad?
rockerface@lemmy.cafe 3 weeks ago
A kid whose parents actually gave a shit about parenting?
edgesmash@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Come on, man. I have my kids eating their veggies, but they don’t like it. The older one knows they are healthy and eats them reluctantly, the younger never chooses veggies unless we attach consequences for not eating (e.g., no dessert unless you eat your veggies).
But neither wants to eat them.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
New anxiety just dropped.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Its not possible to do by any metric. And besides, a chain reaction is needed. A single atom turned into pure kinetic energy wouldn’t be noticeable at all.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Yes, and if I cut a mango, how many billions of atoms is that? So I’d recommend to cut the mango in increments of one angstrom to minimise the chances of a chain reaction happening.
Lumelore@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
When I was in kindergarten they showed us a cartoon with anthropomorphic teeth to try to encourage dental hygiene and those teeth scared me so much that I refused to brush my teeth for years and I ended up getting gingivitis because of it.
Skyrmir@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Just be glad no one showed you crunching life savers in the dark.
Agent641@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I guess there are two kinds of people because when I learned that splitting atoms causes a nuclear explosion, I got a craft knife and some sand from the garden and went to town on them.
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Reminds me of The Flintstones Split the Atom
Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean… The chance of that happening is incredibly low, but… It’s not zero.
Have fun stressing out of cutting things. Any cut you make can be the one low chance cut when you accidentally split an atom. :)
T156@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It is zero. You split atoms all the time, thanks to the radioactive carbon-14 in our bodies, from nuclear testing.
A nuclear bomb goes off because a lot of atoms split all at once, which causes a whole lot more atoms to then split. But that requires a critical mass. It doesn’t just happen on its own.
AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
sorry, but the chances are actually zero. it takes a lot more force and specialized conditions to split an atom than a knife
logicbomb@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If I’m to believe that second person didn’t misspeak, they had “mental breakdowns” with an “s”, so multiple breakdowns, over the thought that their eating lettuce could cause a nuclear apocalypse.
They must really like lettuce. If I had a mental breakdown over the fear that my eating a specific food would cause untold human death and suffering, including my own, I would likely not eat that food again until I could convince myself it was safe.
lime@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
(While chewing lettuce) “Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make.”
SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Would you mind doing that more over towards Washington DC, please? TIA.
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
How dare you add common sense to our imaginary and greatly embellished struggles!
The audacity of this guy, I almost died of Asperger!
pigup@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Maybe after the first few mental breakdowns, they could have maybe just gone on the internet may be kind of like, I don’t know, learned more. So they were saying they were just so sure that they could accidentally split atoms and they didn’t question why there weren’t nuclear explosions going off at every restaurant hundreds of thousands of times per day.
SharkyAttack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You understand that there are a lot of people alive before the internet existed, right? And if this person is relating a story from their childhood, and they’re anywhere over like 35 years old, us old people couldn’t just “go on the internet”.
SharkyAttack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Ah yes, name calling. What a mature way to handle the situation.
Anivia@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
I guess you did not grow up with parents that forced you to clean up your plate before leaving the dinner table