One of these nerds is not like the others,
One of these geeks just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which nerd is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?
I don't like Tyson because I feel he preaches an inaccurate version of the scientific philosophy. So many times I hear him saying things along the lines of absolute certainty, because it's SCIENCE.
Where, we of the true faith, preach: the evidence indicates that this is the most likely to be true, or at least, this model makes predictions about the world more reliably than any other we currently have.
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.
(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.
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.
Fission doesn't happen because we cut atoms in half. Fission happens because we blast enriched uranium with neutrons, the uranium absorbs a neutron, gets too heavy, and falls apart.
I mean think about it. Atoms are surrounded by a negatively charged electron cloud. Pushing 2 atoms together would be (sorta) like trying to push the like poles of two magnets together.
Sure, but you can also rip off electrons from atoms by rubbing them or bending a piece of wire. The energy needed to trigger fission in uranium is less than a picojoule, it just needs to be focused enough to knock away the part of the atom, which is why neutrons are the most common way.
Here is a chart with the rate of fusion for two hydrogen atoms at various temperatures.
I know very little about physics and I'm pretty sure you could cut cucumbers with a knife until the end of time and you'll never trigger a nuclear explosion.
Actually, it's because cucumbers are so cool (c.f. cool as a cucumber) that they're in a ground state. It's actually endothermic to split their atoms so you don't get a chain reaction.
Cutting hot vegetables, habernaros for example, is much more risky and adequate precautions should always be taken to avoid radioactivity contaminating sensitive regions of the body.
Ok if it is theoretically possible to cut atoms by using metal knives then why didn't ever a fission happen? I mean if you combine all knife cutting in the whole world since knives exist, the probability should be pretty high.
Well, it probably happened an infinite amount of times already. But the resulting cucumber-detonation just triggers a new Big Bang. We’re on the whatever-millionth reset now. Should end any day now.
STOP CUTTING CUCUMBERS, SHEEPLE!!
The electromagnetic force from the atoms' respective electron cloud probably help prevent atom from getting close to each other. And the strong nuclear force also help prevent atom from splitting.
Well, that’s why we generally eat bananas without cutting. As everyone knows, bananas are slightly radioactive. This increases the danger when cutting them exponentially, so don’t do that.
No I don’t get it. But I would like to. Is this one of those scenarios where three physicists walk into a bar, each one tells a joke but none of it are funny so no one gets it?