“You are technically correct, the best kind of correct.”
Me: That doesn’t seem right. OH. Oh, I am stupid.
Not stupid. Our brain can just get tripped up sometimes and read what it expects to read instead of what’s really there. The sad part is that there are educated people in the US even today that would be surprised or even argue against you if you stated the other version (more atoms in a glass than in our galaxy). Our science education is woefully lacking now.
What blew me away that I learned not too long ago is the notion that if the galaxy was the size of the US, our solar system would be the size of a fingerprint. Try to even visualize that. (reference is the Epic Spaceman YT channel)
NGL our solar system being the size of a finger print is (somehow) bigger than I expected.
Another fun size thing I heard recently was that if an atom were the size of a football stadium then the nucleus would be the size of a pea.
A fingerprint? That’s actually bigger than I figured.
We had a young, hippy science teacher through 70s grade school. Looking back, that woman made more impact on my life than any other teacher.
Every year, every fucking year, she’d start with the difference in fact and opinion. “Yeah, I get it already. Can we move on?” Apparently not many others got that bit of education.
She taught the scientific method and how it works, she taught how to experiment, how to measure. I still set a beaker down and wait for it to settle before moving on. And I’m not in science!
*OH2
I am impressed by how clever that was. Well done.
It’s almost impossible to see the last two words because your brain is already reeling from the rest of the statement. It took me a few tries to finally parse it.
The glass of water is a bit misleading. Your brain starts thinking about all the water molecules inside. That’s all.
I very slowly zoomed in on the actual words in the post.
Started off processing “molecule” as “mole”, “solar system” as “galaxy”, and thinking “ha, don’t know if that’s true but it sounds both plausible and neat”.
Wasn’t thinking moles, not that technical, but it sounded plausible vs. the number of stars in the Milky Way.
Wait…
There are definitely more hydrogen atoms in a mole of water than stars in the Milky Way.
The Milky Way has somewhere between 100 and 400 billion stars according to Wikipedia (
1*10^11to4*10^11). A mole of water has6.022*10^23molecules in it, each of which has two hydrogen atoms in it for a total of1.2044*10^24hydrogen atoms.10^24 / 10^11 = 10^13which is ten trillion. So, a mole of water has roughly ten trillion times as many hydrogen atoms as the Milky Way has stars.Chad water / virgin Milky Way
Imagine how many more moles of hydrogen the Milky way must have than a single mole of water
clearly never been down the hollywood walk of fame
Iits not a lot, but it’s crazy that it happened twice.
- Number of hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water (H2O): 2
- Number of stars in our (ENTIRE) solar system: 1
That’s the joke.
Thanks, I never would have been able to understand 2>1 if you hadn’t written up that amazing power point slide.
Infeel like this gets reposted here at least once a month, but this one has a different t pic, and way more likes
There are fewer hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water than there are fingers on my hand.
Check and mate.
So do we not count the mini suns being created at places like Livermore Labs? 🤔
We can’t make plasma dense enough to have significant convention over radiance, and the longest active run is only a minute or so. We’re a good way away from plasma stable enough to be called a star, although it’s getting closer. Hydrogen bombs are probably the closest we have so far.
There actually are more molocules of H2O in 10 drops of water than there are stars in the observable universe.
Optimists: the glass is half full
Pessimists: this half empty glass of water has more molecules than there are stars in the observable universe; life is meaningless
I don’t think we can see much, now can we?
“Observable universe” isn’t how much we can see, rather how much it is theoretically possible to observe by any physical means.
I also don’t think that water drop fact is correct. The estimated number of stars in the observable universe is 10^24, which is about an order of magnitude more than 1 mol, and 1 mol of water is about 18g, which is quite a bit more than 10 drops.
Infinity beats both.
Yes, but both of those measures are in the finite space.
*finite amount of space
I skipped reading the word stars, and I thought it was deliberately wrong to rile people up.
I have as many assholes as stars in our solar system, even though it seems like more to Lemmy.
Uhhhh… No. Pretty sure it’s about equal.
±1
Weird water molecule if it had only 1 hydrogen atom. Pretty sure we call that
peroxidehydroxide (tired haven’t slept in days).Though adding 1 hydrogen for H3O1 would probably win you some nobel prizes
I don’t understand your difficulty with that meme.
I don’t have one? ¯\_ʘ‿ʘ_/¯
I don’t understand your difficulty with that.
How many stars do you think there are in our solar system?
Roughly 2
In other words, the number of stars in our solar system is appxomately e.
“per”, by the way, roughly means “too many”. [Hydrogen] peroxide is H₂O₂
What’s the second star in our solar system?
No one asked but you, so thank you.
Also,
Ringo.Do you have randombullet blocked or is this some weird federation mishap?
Federation weirdness I bet cause blocked people show as an expandable comment I can never expand and I just… Don’t see this.
Weird.
Still a shame very few even wanted to engage with the joke except that one guy who is too pedantic to not be rude.
Ringo
That’s a better punchline than mine so I’m going with it.
What’s the other star in our solar system?
My autopilot brain kept skipping over molecule and missing the joke lol.
Ok I had to think about this for a second.
