this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 95 points 6 months ago (6 children)

Knives are also made of atoms

[–] [email protected] 75 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sure? How many? Because I have some atoms at home and need a new knife

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Not this knife

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Call that a knife?

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

One of these nerds is not like the others,
One of these geeks just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which nerd is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Tyson? Why not cause he's an asshole? Are you aware that both Einstein and Hawkings were also assholes?

[–] [email protected] 57 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

While Einstein and Hawking (no s) were giants of their field, published papers that turned all other accepted science on its head, and have basic physical phenomenon of the Universe named after them, they were surprisingly limited in their knowledge of other fields. Whereas NdT will expound on absolutely any topic with the complete certainty that he is a fucking expert, even if he only just now inferred the existence of the thing from the question he is presently being asked. He is a Mycroftian megabrain of galactic proportions, a fact he appreciates better than anyone else.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

But they weren't pretentious know-it-alls on TV and YT

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

I don't like Tyson because I feel he preaches an inaccurate version of the scientific philosophy. So many times I hear him saying things along the lines of absolute certainty, because it's SCIENCE.

Where, we of the true faith, preach: the evidence indicates that this is the most likely to be true, or at least, this model makes predictions about the world more reliably than any other we currently have.

Amen.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 6 months ago (1 children)

No, that knife isn't made of atoms, that knife is made of pure solid quarks. That's why it can cut atomic nuclei.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I choose to believe it's made of small atoms, the kind you get from firing a shrink ray at something.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

They call me Johnny Smallatoms

[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 months ago (1 children)

We're gonna need a community for comedy homicide for this. That last panel ruins it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

[email protected] exists but has no posts, consider cross posting

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (13 children)

That’s easy to explain, having cut a lot of cucumbers in my life. Since the actual nucleus of an atom is much smaller than the atom including its electrons itself, the probability of hitting the protons or neutrons is so small, that I’d need to live for a few thousand years and cut 1 cucumber per second nonstop, before this scenario happens even once. It is not impossible, just very improbable.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 6 months ago (4 children)

(assuming your post isn't a joke) it is impossible to cause a nuclear reaction by cutting cucumbers.

the biggest innacuracy in this comic is that as the panel zooms in on the cucumber atoms, the knife looks exactly the same. if it was realistic it would just be a bunch of metal atoms pushing aside a bunch of cucumber atoms, not a sharp knife slicing through individual atoms.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Bro, you should sharpen your knives.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

Maybe it's not zooming in. Maybe the atoms of the cucumber are getting bigger! 😏

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Well… that, and one nucleus splitting in half wouldn‘t start a chain reaction in a cucumber, and therefore not release a macroscopically noticeable amount of energy.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Fission doesn't happen because we cut atoms in half. Fission happens because we blast enriched uranium with neutrons, the uranium absorbs a neutron, gets too heavy, and falls apart.

I mean think about it. Atoms are surrounded by a negatively charged electron cloud. Pushing 2 atoms together would be (sorta) like trying to push the like poles of two magnets together.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

That’s just one way to do it.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago

I know very little about physics and I'm pretty sure you could cut cucumbers with a knife until the end of time and you'll never trigger a nuclear explosion.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

It’s also why cats are afraid of cucumbers.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Actually, it's because cucumbers are so cool (c.f. cool as a cucumber) that they're in a ground state. It's actually endothermic to split their atoms so you don't get a chain reaction.

Cutting hot vegetables, habernaros for example, is much more risky and adequate precautions should always be taken to avoid radioactivity contaminating sensitive regions of the body.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

I thought the only option with cucumbers is to keep mashing them together until fusion, no?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Ok if it is theoretically possible to cut atoms by using metal knives then why didn't ever a fission happen? I mean if you combine all knife cutting in the whole world since knives exist, the probability should be pretty high.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

Well, it probably happened an infinite amount of times already. But the resulting cucumber-detonation just triggers a new Big Bang. We’re on the whatever-millionth reset now. Should end any day now. STOP CUTTING CUCUMBERS, SHEEPLE!!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Well fission of uranium isn't hard. I want you to see to fission a C atom! XD

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

You're assuming the blade would be thinner than the nucleus, at the very least.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

But what would you do with the sliced cucumbers of millenia?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Someone let Einstein loose, we must admit that violence is on occasion the only recourse.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

The electromagnetic force from the atoms' respective electron cloud probably help prevent atom from getting close to each other. And the strong nuclear force also help prevent atom from splitting.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Okay, now explain bananas.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Well, that’s why we generally eat bananas without cutting. As everyone knows, bananas are slightly radioactive. This increases the danger when cutting them exponentially, so don’t do that.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Then he went on to make lemonade with strawberries and heavy water. Deuterium, you get me? Strawberry fusion lemonade.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (8 children)

No I don’t get it. But I would like to. Is this one of those scenarios where three physicists walk into a bar, each one tells a joke but none of it are funny so no one gets it?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (3 children)

And that's how we got bubbles in beer.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (1 children)

That's gotta be the sharpest knife in existence having a diameter of half an atom...

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

That's a 4D knife.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

When I was a kid, I was legitimately afraid of this

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

And that's why you don't see cooking mouse no more.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

reminds me of yahoo serious splitting a beer atom with a chisel in his shed. young einstein, what a fun movie

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sad to not see more comments about The Subtle Knife. This is a great meme for that concept!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Let me atom *

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