this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 214 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

TL;DR: No. The half-life of hydrogen-sulfide (one of smelliest constituents of a fart) reacting with the oxygen in the jar from just your fart is 12-37 hours. The article gives an example of a particularly potent hypothetical fart that would only retain any distinguishable odor for 9 days tops.

[–] [email protected] 109 points 1 month ago

This guy farts

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

My dreams have been shattered.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

There is a reasonable amount of oxygen in farts? Really?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

4% of a fart is oxygen, according to the article, which is enough to react with all of the hydrogen-sulfide, since 1 mole of oxygen is enough to react with more than 1 mole of hydrogen-sulfide (H₂S makes up around 1% of the total volume).

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Persumebly not but there is oxygen in the air, usually.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Dammit I wanted to breathe in only farts

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So if I farted into a vaccum sealed bag... I could save it then?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Sadly, the fart itself comes with oxygen included

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

So i have to design an attachment to take oxygen out of the fart before sealing it? I better start watching some TED talks this could be some work.

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[–] [email protected] 190 points 1 month ago (6 children)

That reminds me of when I was a kid, farting in the bath. As I saw the bubbles coming up to the surface, I wanted to catch them.

So I took whatever plastic container I could find around the bath - most likely the cap of a shampoo bottle - submerged it, and held it close to my butt when I felt the next fart coming.

I succeeded in catching some of the fart in the cap. Then I claimed my prize by sniffing directly from the cap. It was so much worse than any fart I've ever smelled.

As a true scientist, I've repeated the experiment on a few later occasions, and without a doubt : bath farts captured in plastic containers smell much worse than normal farts.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I remember sitting in the hall during school as a second grader taking to a friend. I said, "I wonder if you farted in a balloon if it would float." A teacher overheard me and scolded me about it, for some reason.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

That was the perfect opportunity to teach the first step of The Scientific Method. The next step was the Hypothesis - what do you think will happen, based on the scientific knowledge you already have?

Then you have to Plan The Experiment, which in this case, would probably really energize the students' brain power. They'll LOVE figuring out this experiment. I would bet that EVERY student would be engaged in this one.

It's the Doing The Experiment that might be problematic, and end up with the teacher explaining themselves to the School Board: "All I can say is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I guess you had to be there."

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Your teachers sucked. Mine would've told me to try at home

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 month ago

That's the same way they did it on Mythbusters.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

My brother used to fart in a tennis ball can and hold me down and make me smell it. I agree, contained farts are awfuler.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Thank you for your contributions to science

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I think its because while its under water it doesn't have a chance to diffuse into a larger volume of air -- normally farts are pretty dilute by the time it makes it to anyone's nose.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They've chosen the worst jar to put in the picture

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Yeah, they didn't fart in that jar, shart maybe...

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

Why does the fart jar in the picture have a spoon in it?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hey sweetie, would you like anymore fart mousse?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You know why.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

why is the jar brown to start with, what kind of a fart are we dealing with here sir?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

To agitate the fart in 20 years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

A better question might be what kind of farts did they have to laminate the inside of that jar so thoroughly that only a spoon could extract it?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Who do you think you are?

Runnin' round leaving scars

Saving your jar of farts

Tearing love apart

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

I say that every time I hear this song too hahaha.

You're gonna catch a cold,

From the ice inside your hole.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

*Tearing ~~love~~ butt apart

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Yahh the article said farted not sharted...

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[–] RamblingPanda 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

We should sell barrel aged farts to rich idiots.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

It'd probably smell like flowers based on where the world is going

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Farting in jars is dangerous business. You don't want to end up like that lady from 90 Day Fiancé do you???

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Something about that story smells fishy.

$1k / jar and brought in $100k... so that's 100 jars total. Maybe a little extra in case of an accident during shipping. So why did she need to fart 50x per week? Shit, that would be $2.4 million per year of she could actually sell that.

So the way I see it, she was farting in a jar 50x per week but only selling 2 of them... that's not a business, that's a fetish she managed to squeeze a whiff of money out of.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

"It happened ONE TIME in 4th grade!!"

~I~ ~lied..!~

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I guess it dependson how you store it?

Yes, funny, but methane falls apart if exposed to UV light. Then again, glass blocks most UV...

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

methane does not have a smell. most hydrocarbons don't. that's why they put smelly stuff (mostly thiols, which are very smelly sulphur compounds) into butane, gasoline, etc.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What? This isn't even remotely true. Standard glass blocks half of UV at best (UVB), and it's the less harmful half.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How do you preserve a sunset, or a child’s laughter? How do you preserve the feeling of a first kiss, or the flavor of your mom’s hug? How do you preserve the memory of your lost love, or the fish that flew away? How do you preserve the anxious feeling of your first ritual death match in the ring of eternal fire, or a crisp autumn day?

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

Fart in a vacuum or maybe in nitrogen? Seems like oxygen is the enemy.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

maybe if you fart into a cryogenic chamber right into a pot of liquid nitrogen. then you can heat it up again later and.. why am i here again?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You’re solving important problems, just like the rest of us.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Just store it in an office chair.

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