this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
664 points (100.0% liked)

Science Memes

14700 readers
1746 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
664
Happens every time (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
all 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 68 points 2 months ago

>Puts Iron-56 in a box.
>checks at the heat death if the universe
>still Iron-56
>mfw box also Iron-56

[–] [email protected] 57 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But if you don’t look in side 2 billion years later, it’s both U-235 and lead-207!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago

Schrödinger’s radioactive decay may or may not have killed his cat.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The lump would still have about 14% uranium still in it. (If my understanding of half-life is correct)

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Afaik its always going to have some parts of uranium right? 50% after one half life, 25% after two half lives and it will keep on halving practically forever (or till the last atom decays). In the end it comes down to when you consider it a negligible amount.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

after a certain point, you're going to get to where you have to split an atom or two.

fairly sure that'd be far less exciting than normal.

Edit: i decided to try and figure out how long that would take.. and per usual the law of large numbers caused my eyes to glaze over.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

half life times log2(amount of atoms), right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I mean I didn’t get that far, I lost track of how many zeroes were in the half-life.

(It’s 704ish million, right?)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

I mean, yes, that's how it would work if there were an infinite number of atoms in the piece. There's a finite amount, though, so eventually there will be a point when all the atoms have completely decayed.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Yeah, thats what I was using to get 14%.

2billion years is about 2.8 halflives, so I calculated (1/2)^2.8 ~ 0.14.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Damn greedy corporations and their shrinkflation

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Damn bro, how many times has this happened to you

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

Enough to post the meme

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

If you put a cat into the box with the uranium and wait the same amount of time, that cat will be dead. this is true. no questions. thank you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Unless the uranium in the box caused a mutation in the cat giving it eternal life.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So is Lead-207 special lead, or is it just, like, lead?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

The normal lead we know but still special. Is the last stable element in the PSE and there is the theory that it's actually radioactive (unstable) but the decay is so slow that we probably never see a single atom of it decaying.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Schrödinger’s Nucleides.