Me: That doesn't seem right. OH. Oh, I am stupid.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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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)
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!
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.
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".
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*10^11 to 4*10^11). A mole of water has 6.022*10^23 molecules in it, each of which has two hydrogen atoms in it for a total of 1.2044*10^24 hydrogen atoms.
10^24 / 10^11 = 10^13 which is ten trillion. So, a mole of water has roughly ten trillion times as many hydrogen atoms as the Milky Way has stars.
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That is a masterfully crafted mansplaining trap.
Chappeau.
That's actually just the first part of the phrase. The whole thing is "je ne suis pas français, chappeau"
edit: Ok this was supposed to be a joke about mansplaining something you know nothing about, but we fell into Poe's law.
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Click here if you don't understand
There is only one star in our solar system - the Sun.
And if you still don't get it, click here
Meanwhile, there are two hydrogen atoms in a water molecule - H~2~O
If you're still having trouble, click here
2 is greater than 1
And if all of this continues to elude you, click here
You just lost The Game^TM^.
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Only if they are good things. 2 people trying to stab you, not greater than 1. Pessimism, the negative perspective. Only in math do we hold onto those darn dashes
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There are more memes estimating the size of the universe than there are stars in the galaxy.
Solar system.
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With greater hydrogen comes greater responsibility.
Like twice as much
Most people have more balls than there are stars in our solar system.
Wait, are you counting ovaries?
The average human has somewhere between 1.1 and 1.4 testicles.
Late edit: I was not sober when I wrote this and I definitely did the math wrong.
How are you averaging the humans? Or are you averaging testicles?
Considering 50% of the population doesn't have testicles, the average being over 1 indicates that there are a few million people with 3 testicles.
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- 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.
I skipped reading the word stars, and I thought it was deliberately wrong to rile people up.
My autopilot brain kept skipping over molecule and missing the joke lol.
There are fewer hydrogen atoms in a single molecule of water than there are fingers on my hand.
Check and mate.
There actually are more molocules of H2O in 10 drops of water than there are stars in the observable universe.
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Also interesting: If you were to take your nerves out and lay them end on end you would die.
Actually interesting fact
Your height is closer in scale to a light second than the size of an atom. And yet atoms seem more approachable than light seconds. Fascinating stuff!
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Ken M made a similar joke a while back right?
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