this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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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.
Bro, you should sharpen your knives.
Won't this cause nicks and dulling as sudden heating and impact lead to both knives becoming extremely useless ?
Also replacing one of the knives with a sharpening rod, I can sort of suspend disbelief enough to believe it "possible".
Maybe it's not zooming in. Maybe the atoms of the cucumber are getting bigger! 😏
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.
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.
The Subtle Knife is definitely so sharp that it cuts through dimensions, so I think it would cut atoms.
So really that just means it's not inaccurate, it's just a very specific, fictional knife!
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.
That’s just one way to do it.
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.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#/media/File%3AFusion_rxnrate.svg
This chart bottoms out at a few million degrees, since the probability is extremely low.
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.
It’s also why cats are afraid of cucumbers.
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.
I thought the only option with cucumbers is to keep mashing them together until fusion, no?
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!!
I mean, this happened once: https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/meet-oklo-the-earths-two-billion-year-old-only-known-natural-nuclear-reactor
Well fission of uranium isn't hard. I want you to see to fission a C atom! XD
Hmm this made me wonder why something like this wouldn't melt the rock and then sink into the crust and then into the planet. Probably not hot enough.
And that made me think if we could build something like a big pellet of fissile material, encase it in tungsten or something so that it is hot enough to do so but remains stable, and then let it sink into the earth. Maybe that could be tracked? Then we could learn something about how it moves and where it ends up. But probably can't be tracked since this isn't star trek 🖖
But what would you do with the sliced cucumbers of millenia?
Dunno. I guess growing them fast enough would also be a problem.
You're assuming the blade would be thinner than the nucleus, at the very least.
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.
You mean I’m just not cutting strong enough?
Yes
Someone let Einstein loose, we must admit that violence is on occasion the only recourse.
Okay, now explain bananas.
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.
What about your teeth?
What do your teeth look like, man?
Some are quite sharp. Won't they cause a fission? Should I just munch on the banana instead?
Not with that attitude.
You're doing it wrong. The mouse just diced a cucumber really, really l, small.