If I'm to believe that second person didn't misspeak, they had "mental breakdowns" with an "s", so multiple breakdowns, over the thought that their eating lettuce could cause a nuclear apocalypse.
They must really like lettuce. If I had a mental breakdown over the fear that my eating a specific food would cause untold human death and suffering, including my own, I would likely not eat that food again until I could convince myself it was safe.
Maybe after the first few mental breakdowns, they could have maybe just gone on the internet may be kind of like, I don't know, learned more. So they were saying they were just so sure that they could accidentally split atoms and they didn't question why there weren't nuclear explosions going off at every restaurant hundreds of thousands of times per day.
You understand that there are a lot of people alive before the internet existed, right? And if this person is relating a story from their childhood, and they’re anywhere over like 35 years old, us old people couldn’t just “go on the internet”.
And even if you did go on the internet, there wouldnt be any answer to the prompt "does chewing salad risk splitting atoms" on yahoo or altavista. The search engines where not "smart" enough to parse deeper in the question nor where there enough "random trivia" answers online
Reminds me of a profoundly stupid movie I saw as a child called Young Einstein starring Yahoo Serious and no that’s not aphasia talking. He takes an atom out to the shed and splits it with a chisel. An explosion ensues, complete with charred face and smoking hair standing on end.
I don’t equate “profoundly stupid” to “bad”. I enjoy a good stupid movie. I adore Hudson Hawk. I watch Ready Player One all the time in the background.
I think the people who sleep well at night are the ones that don't care how anything works. Sometimes it's ignorance, but often it's just burnout, and worse sometimes it's a complete lack of empathy for anything that isn't themselves.
I think your jaw would have to be made of tungsten or something for that to happen, but I'm not a physist; I've just played one in a video game. 🤷‍♂️
It would not make a chain reaction because the nuclei of typical atoms are unlikely to split when irradiated (that is to say, hit by the pieces of the original atom that split) and will more likely ionize (have an electron knocked off) or transmute (turn into a different element by changing the number of protons).
In nuclear weapons or reactors the uranium must be "enriched" because regular uranium atoms are too stable to sustain a fission reaction. We must have a high amount of rare uranium-235 (the easily splittable isotope) compared to U-238 (the more common stabler isotope) which is why uranium needs to be enriched. Most of the atoms in your salad are stable isotopes, so there will likely not be any cascading fission reactions even if your teeth were somehow able to trigger one (or even 1000) every single time you took a bite.
When I learned about germs, how they're everywhere and too small to see, I thought I must be squishing them every time I touch anything. So I went around the entire house touching every surface, especially the windows, because nobody ever touched those.
I remember being told "Atoms are always moving", so I would cut reeeeaaaalllllyyyy fucking slow for a bit thinking that the atoms would "move out of the way."
I also just read my husband this meme and he was like "Oh yeah. I remember thinking I was risking my area for arts and crafts."
When I was a kid, I was playing one day outside and then later I realized there is an ant nest nearby and I saw that I killed some ants by walking near it.
After that, I didn't want to kill any more bugs etc, so whenever I was walking on grass, I would always check the grass before me to see if there are any bugs in it, and only then I would make a step.
Yeah, it was very slow and inefficient, but it wasn't that bad because I was actively avoiding grass and this whole experiment didn't last very long either, maybe a couple of months.
When I was in kindergarten they showed us a cartoon with anthropomorphic teeth to try to encourage dental hygiene and those teeth scared me so much that I refused to brush my teeth for years and I ended up getting gum disease because of it.
Its not possible to do by any metric. And besides, a chain reaction is needed. A single atom turned into pure kinetic energy wouldn't be noticeable at all.
Yes, and if I cut a mango, how many billions of atoms is that? So I'd recommend to cut the mango in increments of one angstrom to minimise the chances of a chain reaction happening.
\0. The force that keeps the nucleus together is much stronger than the force needed to break the inter-atom bonfs. (Blanking on the names right now. Strong and weak forces?)
I guess there are two kinds of people because when I learned that splitting atoms causes a nuclear explosion, I got a craft knife and some sand from the garden and went to town on them trying to slice some atoms just right đź‘Ś
It is zero. You split atoms all the time, thanks to the radioactive carbon-14 in our bodies, from nuclear testing.
A nuclear bomb goes off because a lot of atoms split all at once, which causes a whole lot more atoms to then split. But that requires a critical mass. It doesn't just happen on its own.
Come on, man. I have my kids eating their veggies, but they don't like it. The older one knows they are healthy and eats them reluctantly, the younger never chooses veggies unless we attach consequences for not eating (e.g., no dessert unless you eat your veggies).
Respectfully, if neither of your children have a vegetable* dish they will eat as a snack you haven't exposed them to a wide enough array of vegetables and vegetables preparation methods.
Don't be afraid to add salt, roast instead of boil, or just experiment with things you haven't tried.
(*: And "vegetable" here is strictly in a culinary context, excluding grains and near-grains like potatoes and including savory sead-bearing plant-parts like cucumbers. But if they don't even like a form of potato or a grain, you may have a eating disorder on your hand...)
Hey man, I honestly appreciate your insight and ideas. You're spot on for what to do for how to cook and prepare veggies for kids (and adults too). My parents raised me on the most bland American cuisine imagination (they rarely even added salt), but when I left home, I discovered the greater world of veggie preparation.
I'm glad you took it in the spirit it was intended. (Slightly chiding, but well-meaning.)
I think it can be really hard to not pass on our bad habits to our kids. Mine have a room just as messy as mine ever was, and they're at least as bad at doing their homework as I ever was.
I'm glad you shared! Life is hard, parenting is doubly hard, and we're all just trying to make it through and do at least a little better than our parents did.
I'm just glad my kids didn't inherit my messy room... I had literal layers of stuff on the floor, like it was some sort of strata. I can't believe my parents let me get away with it. That said, I knew where everything was.
My favorite food as a kid was cauliflower and my family didn’t even make it nicely, just steamed with a little butter. I still love vegetables, but I don’t think I’ve ever steamed anything but fiddleheads and dumplings.
56 Comments
logicbomb@lemmy.world · 99 pts · 264d
If I'm to believe that second person didn't misspeak, they had "mental breakdowns" with an "s", so multiple breakdowns, over the thought that their eating lettuce could cause a nuclear apocalypse.
They must really like lettuce. If I had a mental breakdown over the fear that my eating a specific food would cause untold human death and suffering, including my own, I would likely not eat that food again until I could convince myself it was safe.
lime@feddit.nl · 104 pts · 264d
SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world · 20 pts · 264d
Would you mind doing that more over towards Washington DC, please? TIA.
lime@feddit.nl · 17 pts · 264d
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 264d
How dare you add common sense to our imaginary and greatly embellished struggles!
The audacity of this guy, I almost died of Asperger!
pigup@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 264d
Maybe after the first few mental breakdowns, they could have maybe just gone on the internet may be kind of like, I don't know, learned more. So they were saying they were just so sure that they could accidentally split atoms and they didn't question why there weren't nuclear explosions going off at every restaurant hundreds of thousands of times per day.
Edit: /s for the simpletons below 👇
SharkyAttack@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 264d
You understand that there are a lot of people alive before the internet existed, right? And if this person is relating a story from their childhood, and they’re anywhere over like 35 years old, us old people couldn’t just “go on the internet”.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 263d
And even if you did go on the internet, there wouldnt be any answer to the prompt "does chewing salad risk splitting atoms" on yahoo or altavista. The search engines where not "smart" enough to parse deeper in the question nor where there enough "random trivia" answers online
SharkyAttack@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 263d
Ah yes, name calling. What a mature way to handle the situation.
Anivia@feddit.org · 2 pts · 264d
I guess you did not grow up with parents that forced you to clean up your plate before leaving the dinner table
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de · 56 pts · 264d
Sometimes all kids need is a scientifically literate adult to explain precisely why their fear isn't possible.
Frozengyro@lemmy.world · 30 pts · 264d
Yea, just tell them they and the surrounding half mile would be instantly vaporized and wouldn't even know they were dead.
edgemaster72@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 264d
"It hasn't happened yet and you damn sure aren't special enough to be the one to do it"
icelimit@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 264d
It happens all the time. That's how the multiverse branches are kept under a manageable number for the simulation.
EvilBit@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 264d
Reminds me of a profoundly stupid movie I saw as a child called Young Einstein starring Yahoo Serious and no that’s not aphasia talking. He takes an atom out to the shed and splits it with a chisel. An explosion ensues, complete with charred face and smoking hair standing on end.
lime@feddit.nu · 9 pts · 264d
honestly the sound of him hunting around with the chisel is a pretty good bit
skisnow@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 263d
Hey, that was my favourite movie when it came out. I was sure Yahoo Serious was going to be a huge star.
EvilBit@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 263d
I don’t equate “profoundly stupid” to “bad”. I enjoy a good stupid movie. I adore Hudson Hawk. I watch Ready Player One all the time in the background.
ameancow@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 263d
_stranger_@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 263d
I loved this story, thank you for sharing.
I think the people who sleep well at night are the ones that don't care how anything works. Sometimes it's ignorance, but often it's just burnout, and worse sometimes it's a complete lack of empathy for anything that isn't themselves.
riskable@programming.dev · 15 pts · 264d
Atoms lettuce break the iceberg.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 15 pts · 264d
A single atom wouldn't even be worse than, like, a pop rock anyway. You need a whole mess of them motherfuckers to make a big boom.
icelimit@lemmy.ml · 7 pts · 264d
If I accidentally bite an atom and the tiny shards shatters nearby atoms, wouldn't that just make more? Like sort of.. a chain reaction ?
Maybe I just have to gobble up all my salad before all the booms blow my jaws and neighbours away.
Kolanaki@pawb.social · 7 pts · 264d
I think your jaw would have to be made of tungsten or something for that to happen, but I'm not a physist; I've just played one in a video game. 🤷‍♂️
TriplePlaid@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 261d
It would not make a chain reaction because the nuclei of typical atoms are unlikely to split when irradiated (that is to say, hit by the pieces of the original atom that split) and will more likely ionize (have an electron knocked off) or transmute (turn into a different element by changing the number of protons).
In nuclear weapons or reactors the uranium must be "enriched" because regular uranium atoms are too stable to sustain a fission reaction. We must have a high amount of rare uranium-235 (the easily splittable isotope) compared to U-238 (the more common stabler isotope) which is why uranium needs to be enriched. Most of the atoms in your salad are stable isotopes, so there will likely not be any cascading fission reactions even if your teeth were somehow able to trigger one (or even 1000) every single time you took a bite.
icelimit@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 261d
So this is what nerd-baiting feels like
moakley@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 263d
When I learned about germs, how they're everywhere and too small to see, I thought I must be squishing them every time I touch anything. So I went around the entire house touching every surface, especially the windows, because nobody ever touched those.
Steamymoomilk@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 264d
NOO BILLL
WHYYY
EVAPORATES INTO ASH
theuniqueone@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 264d
Yep was super paranoid and anxious over misunderstandings now just super paranoid and anxious over worst case unlikely scenarios.
AquaTofana@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 264d
I remember being told "Atoms are always moving", so I would cut reeeeaaaalllllyyyy fucking slow for a bit thinking that the atoms would "move out of the way."
I also just read my husband this meme and he was like "Oh yeah. I remember thinking I was risking my area for arts and crafts."
Stonewyvvern@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 263d
Learned about Vacuum Decay when I was 10...it gave me another complex layered on top of my other complex layer cake...
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 263d
yeah my poor dyson /s
Seriously though, the best part about vacuum decay is you'd never see it coming and barely have time to notice if it did happen.
Cossty@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 264d
When I was a kid, I was playing one day outside and then later I realized there is an ant nest nearby and I saw that I killed some ants by walking near it.
After that, I didn't want to kill any more bugs etc, so whenever I was walking on grass, I would always check the grass before me to see if there are any bugs in it, and only then I would make a step.
Yeah, it was very slow and inefficient, but it wasn't that bad because I was actively avoiding grass and this whole experiment didn't last very long either, maybe a couple of months.
Then I went back to stepping on the bugs.
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social · 3 pts · 263d
Just tell yourself they'd kill you if they had the chance, it's a preemptive strike
Lumelore@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 263d
When I was in kindergarten they showed us a cartoon with anthropomorphic teeth to try to encourage dental hygiene and those teeth scared me so much that I refused to brush my teeth for years and I ended up getting gum disease because of it.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 264d
New anxiety just dropped.
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 8 pts · 263d
Its not possible to do by any metric. And besides, a chain reaction is needed. A single atom turned into pure kinetic energy wouldn't be noticeable at all.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 263d
Yes, and if I cut a mango, how many billions of atoms is that? So I'd recommend to cut the mango in increments of one angstrom to minimise the chances of a chain reaction happening.
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 263d
\0. The force that keeps the nucleus together is much stronger than the force needed to break the inter-atom bonfs. (Blanking on the names right now. Strong and weak forces?)
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 263d
Yeah, but what if the knife is really sharp?
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 263d
The knife edge can't be smaller than an atoms width, so still no.
NoDignity@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 263d
You say that until someone pulls the classic prank of swapping all your mango atoms with uranium-235.
ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 263d
Yeah and what if I squish the mango, thereby compressing the water and fusing the hydrogen into helium?
Skyrmir@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 264d
Just be glad no one showed you crunching life savers in the dark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcgRGo4wj2w
Agent641@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 263d
I guess there are two kinds of people because when I learned that splitting atoms causes a nuclear explosion, I got a craft knife and some sand from the garden and went to town on them trying to slice some atoms just right đź‘Ś
kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 263d
Reminds me of The Flintstones Split the Atom
Tattorack@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 263d
I mean... The chance of that happening is incredibly low, but... It's not zero.
Have fun stressing out of cutting things. Any cut you make can be the one low chance cut when you accidentally split an atom. :)
T156@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 263d
It is zero. You split atoms all the time, thanks to the radioactive carbon-14 in our bodies, from nuclear testing.
A nuclear bomb goes off because a lot of atoms split all at once, which causes a whole lot more atoms to then split. But that requires a critical mass. It doesn't just happen on its own.
AllHailTheSheep@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 263d
sorry, but the chances are actually zero. it takes a lot more force and specialized conditions to split an atom than a knife
edgesmash@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 264d
What kid wants to eat salad?
rockerface@lemmy.cafe · 11 pts · 264d
A kid whose parents actually gave a shit about parenting?
edgesmash@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 264d
Come on, man. I have my kids eating their veggies, but they don't like it. The older one knows they are healthy and eats them reluctantly, the younger never chooses veggies unless we attach consequences for not eating (e.g., no dessert unless you eat your veggies).
But neither wants to eat them.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 264d
Respectfully, if neither of your children have a vegetable* dish they will eat as a snack you haven't exposed them to a wide enough array of vegetables and vegetables preparation methods.
Don't be afraid to add salt, roast instead of boil, or just experiment with things you haven't tried.
(*: And "vegetable" here is strictly in a culinary context, excluding grains and near-grains like potatoes and including savory sead-bearing plant-parts like cucumbers. But if they don't even like a form of potato or a grain, you may have a eating disorder on your hand...)
edgesmash@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 264d
Hey man, I honestly appreciate your insight and ideas. You're spot on for what to do for how to cook and prepare veggies for kids (and adults too). My parents raised me on the most bland American cuisine imagination (they rarely even added salt), but when I left home, I discovered the greater world of veggie preparation.
But, with all due respect, you haven't met my kids. My partner and I are not perfect parents, but we've tried many different ways to prepare and serve veggies, including salted, roasted, sautéd with oil and seasoning, boiled, raw with/without dip/sauce... It doesn't help that my partner is nearly as picky as my kids (to be fair, I can be quite picky with respect to texture). But, at least we're making sure they understand that a balanced diet is vital to health. And, hey, both of my kids are healthy and in the lower percentile for height-weight ratio, so we haven't failed them yet.
Regarding my original downvoted comment, it was just an old Gen x dude trying to make a dumb old joke.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
I'm glad you took it in the spirit it was intended. (Slightly chiding, but well-meaning.)
I think it can be really hard to not pass on our bad habits to our kids. Mine have a room just as messy as mine ever was, and they're at least as bad at doing their homework as I ever was.
Good job so far!
edgesmash@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 264d
I'm glad you shared! Life is hard, parenting is doubly hard, and we're all just trying to make it through and do at least a little better than our parents did.
I'm just glad my kids didn't inherit my messy room... I had literal layers of stuff on the floor, like it was some sort of strata. I can't believe my parents let me get away with it. That said, I knew where everything was.
Anyway, good job to you as well!
edgemaster72@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 264d
My nephew's favorite food is broccoli, not all kids hate veggies
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 264d
My favorite food as a kid was cauliflower and my family didn’t even make it nicely, just steamed with a little butter. I still love vegetables, but I don’t think I’ve ever steamed anything but fiddleheads and dumplings.