Science Memes

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

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Let me at 'em!! (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (34 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] 46 points 1 month ago (6 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] 17 points 1 month 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.

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

To put into perspective just how trivial it is, the actual amount of energy of splitting a single nucleus is on the order of picojoules. The shock from touching a doorknob is a few millijoules, literally millions of times more powerful.

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