[HN Gopher] Where does a candle go when it burns?
___________________________________________________________________
Where does a candle go when it burns?
Author : prostoalex
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-04-28 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| kazinator wrote:
| If the products of incomplete combustion make up just 0.1%, how
| come if you pass your fingertip through the flame, too quickly to
| feel any pain, you get a solid black swath of soot on your skin
| in just that split second? The stuff is just spewing out.
| retrac wrote:
| If you interfere with the flame, by taking away heat or
| limiting airflow so it can't get enough oxygen, you will get
| partial combustion, where you have incomplete combustion
| byproducts and vaporized fuel in the mix as well. Same reason
| why a can of gasoline on fire will produce huge billows of
| black smoke (insufficient oxygen) while when burned under
| precise conditions in an engine it's much cleaner, even without
| exhaust filtering.
| ajuc wrote:
| Putting something relatively cold and with high thermal mass
| (like anything solid) to a flame drastically increases how much
| incomplete combustion happens near it. Basically you take the
| heat away before it can finish burning the fuel.
|
| That's why a clean flame will still soot anything you put over
| it.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| The yellow part is glowing soot particles. Where it stops being
| yellow, it has mostly burned up (turned into carbon dioxide).
| No surprise that there's a lot of soot _in_ the flame.
| kazinator wrote:
| Where it stops being yellow, the particles have just cooled
| down so they don't glow. At that point, you see a black trail
| of smoke wafting upward. You won't see easily that by the
| light of the candle alone, though.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Hold a spoon above the flame, it takes a long time to
| become black, if at all. Hold it into the flame, it becomes
| black instantly. You need to explain why that is so to
| convince me.
| celticninja wrote:
| The spoon causes more soot to be created by interfering
| with the combustion process.
| [deleted]
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| tl;dr: Into your lungs
| im3w1l wrote:
| One thing that always amazed me is how the wick burns at just the
| right speed, how it keeps pace with the wax. Neither does it burn
| away too quickly leaving nothing to keep the flame going, nor
| does it burn too slowly leaving decimeters of wick when the
| candle is burnt out.
|
| I guess there must be some feedback process going on, which makes
| a long wick burn faster than a short one.
| avidiax wrote:
| There probably are some feedback loops like this, but there's
| also just a careful balance between the wick size, the size of
| the jar, the formulation of the wax, the preparation of the
| candle, and the use of it.
|
| Some examples of things that can go wrong:
| https://www.candlescience.com/wax/soy-wax-trouble-shooting-g...
| jeffbee wrote:
| The wick is in a local negative feedback cycle with its fuel.
| If it were to burn "too fast" then its fuel input rate will be
| reduced, and it would burn more slowly.
|
| If the negative feedback mechanism didn't exist, the candle
| combustion reaction would runaway and the whole thing would
| explode.
| smegger001 wrote:
| As GOOP discovered...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/19/experie.
| ..
| renewiltord wrote:
| Woah, particle dispersion is fucking crazy. I had no bloody idea
| it spreads all around the world in a year. I wonder what the
| minimum size of radioactive explosion would be to send a particle
| from say India (on the other side of the world) to me here on the
| West Coast and provide appreciable harm.
| oceanghost wrote:
| A few months after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, the
| background radiation where I lived in Anaheim, CA went from
| like 0.08 - 0.12usv to 0.40 - 0.70usv depending on the day.
|
| I had a radiation detector because I lived in a historic home
| and was a little paranoid about things like lead, radiation,
| etc.
|
| It's of course anecdotal.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Fascinating. Thanks for that anecdote.
|
| I remember a story where some European nuclear plant
| operators all evacuated when their badges reported high
| radiation and on stepping out they realized the count was
| higher outside. Chernobyl had just failed. Might be
| apocryphal but I enjoyed the picture so I'm not even going to
| verify.
| [deleted]
| undebuggable wrote:
| The intermediate image of globe with particles dispersed only
| through the northern hemisphere is because of the Coriolis force?
| SigmundA wrote:
| Fun thing about the carbon cycle, much of the candles mass goes
| into the air and much the mass of a tree comes from the air.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| My mind was blown a little bit when I realized that when you
| lose fat, you do so by breathing it out. Some of which will
| also go on to make trees as well.
| VanillaCafe wrote:
| The final bit that locked it in for me (and someone please
| correct me if this is wrong) is that going to the bathroom
| (which what many people assume is where weight leaves the
| body) is actually the last stage of "energy input" to the
| body and doesn't really play a role in "energy output".
| anm89 wrote:
| I don't understand what you are saying here. The physical
| weight of the feces does leave your body. How is that an
| input?
| markdown wrote:
| It's the end of the input. Think about it another way...
| say you chew on a slice of orange, swallow the juice, and
| spit out the pith. The pith isn't output of your body.
| It's just the end of the intake process.
|
| Feaces isn't produced by your metabolic system. It's just
| the byproduct of intake. The stuff that your body didn't
| absorb.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Feces may not be produced by your metabolic system, but
| it is certainly not just a byproduct of intake. It
| includes red blood cells that have failed quality
| assurance and been filtered out of the bloodstream by the
| spleen; that is why it's brown.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Well, your body does not utilize all the energy it could
| from the food and drink you ingest. Say if you get a
| condition where your digestive efficiency goes down -
| tapeworm, inflammation, whatever - all else equal, you're
| going to start losing weight fast. This is why gastric
| bypass surgery works.
| Izkata wrote:
| Therefore, trees are fat.
|
| ;)
| notJim wrote:
| Cheekily, this also means that if you're losing weight, you
| are a net emitter of CO2, thus hastening global warming. On
| the other hand, if you gain weight, you are a net sink.
|
| Of course the carbon cost of food production does...
| complicate this a little bit :)
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The balance evens out pretty quickly on the other end
| though. Does anyone know if crematoriums do carbon capture?
| ant6n wrote:
| But there's also water generated when buying (edit:burning)
| carbo hydrates.
| s0rce wrote:
| I assume you mean burning, but if you drive or even walk to
| the store to buy the carbs that also generates water.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > much the mass of a tree comes from the air
|
| A fun pastime of mine is asking people where they think the
| mass of a tree comes from and trying to guide them to the right
| answer (CO2) via the socratic method (i.e. trying to only ask
| questions)
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I was wondering how much of a tree's mass is not Carbon or
| Oxygen. Turns out it's somewhere around 10%; half of that is
| light weight hydrogen. So water probably provides a decent
| chunk of a tree's oxygen content also.
|
| Page 4 https://www.urban-
| forestry.com/assets/documents/Coder_Tree%2...
| 600frogs wrote:
| > After about a year, atoms from your candle will have spread
| completely around the globe.
|
| How on earth is this provable?
| Jabbles wrote:
| Probably based on data from radiation leaks.
| js2 wrote:
| > Wax is made of hydrogen and carbon.
|
| Too bad he doesn't explain where the energy in the wax came from
| like Feynman does when explaining fire:
|
| https://youtu.be/N1pIYI5JQLE
|
| Paraffin wax is derived from petroleum, so like the wood in
| Feynman's explanation, the energy is from the sun via ancient
| photosynthesis.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| Or more recent photosynthesis. You can make candle wax out of
| soy, beeswax, crisco, etc.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Also from animal fat.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| All fossil fuels are solar power in that sense?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Most of them. There are also the nuclear reactions in the
| earth's core.
| kgwgk wrote:
| I know that there are organisms that thrive in geotermally
| heated environments, but do they really produce fossil
| fuels?
| 542458 wrote:
| Only in the most pendantic of senses - a bit like arguing
| that my car is fusion powered because it runs on gas that was
| originally given energy from the sun. I suppose in a sense
| everything in the universe is powered by whatever triggered
| the Big Bang.
| cableclasper wrote:
| There's a hell of a lot more.
|
| Michael Faraday's "Chemical History of a Candle" is a very
| readable masterpiece on the subject, despite its age.
|
| The Engineering Guy has done much to revive Faraday's work:
| http://www.engineerguy.com/faraday/
| jbay808 wrote:
| One of my favourite books, especially for his demonstration of
| _how_ they know what 's going on at each point of the chemical
| reaction.
|
| Also, he explains clearly what fire is, which is something that
| many people puzzle about for all their lives.
| jedimastert wrote:
| He also did a full video series. "Chemical History of a Candle"
| was originally a series of lectures given by Faraday; he
| recreated the lectures and the demonstrations. Definitely worth
| a watch, especially if you don't have a conceptual
| understanding of fire
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Wow, the New York times has truly hired or acquired everyone.
| adamnew123456 wrote:
| I guess that's where the What If blog went, it hasn't been
| updated for a while now. No timestamps on the last post but
| wiki says he started writing this column for NYT late 2019,
| which feels about right.
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| I had no idea Randall started writing for the nytimes. Seems
| like a great continuation to his what if series. I've missed it
| dearly. Hope he writes more!
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Wouldn't also some mass be converted into energy? Probably not
| much though
| metric10 wrote:
| Yes. Back of envelope, took physics in college many years
| ago[1] analysis:
|
| E=mc^2, or energy = mass * (speed of light)^2. According to
| Wikipedia a candle can produce 77 watts of energy "combined." I
| guess that means 77 joules (1 watt = 1 J/s). So we have:
|
| 77 = m * (299792458)^2
|
| Solving for m via Wolfram Alpha:
|
| m = 11 / 12839369696240252
|
| Which is in grams. That's a _very_ small amount, but it's not
| zero.
|
| edit:
|
| [1] If I'm being honest, I got E=mc^2 from watching the
| Twilight Zone as a kid, not college physics.
| Ovah wrote:
| Kind of pedantic but I've never understood why it's E=mc^2
| and not E=Dmc^2. In Einsteins original paper he derives the
| equation with a delta m: a change of mass corresponds to some
| amount of energy. To me that is different than to say that a
| whole mass corresponds to a some amount of energy. I've never
| seen a justification why the delta can be omitted and why the
| equation still would hold true.
| [deleted]
| mannerheim wrote:
| I would assume it has to do with relativistic mass, which
| used to be somewhat commonly used (m used for relativistic
| mass, m_0 for rest or invariant mass), but which is now
| disfavoured. For m as relativistic mass, E = mc^2 holds.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The delta is implied. If you're being rigorous yea you'd
| include it. But you never see it used rigorously.
| Ovah wrote:
| Physics is usually pretty rigorous. In the context of
| science for a general audience, or printing pretty
| T-shirts, I get why it's omitted. I just find it funny
| that when it comes to E=mc^2 physics suddenly lack some
| rigour even in the college physics classes I've taken.
| It's probably OK to skip it I'm just curious as to why. I
| don't think I've ever seen the delta mentioned except in
| Einstein's original paper.
| snissn wrote:
| usually the momentum is really low so it's fine, you could
| read this wikipedia article about it, share questions if
| that doesn't clear things up
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy%E2%80%93momentum_relat
| i...
| Ovah wrote:
| I'll give it a read-through this weekend, thanks!
| benchaney wrote:
| There isn't a delta because E=mc^2 isn't just describing a
| reaction, or a conversion. It is describing the fundamental
| equivalence between mass and energy. It is true even in
| situations where DE and Dm aren't defined.
| Ovah wrote:
| "It is describing the fundamental equivalence between
| mass and energy" I agree that this is widely agreed upon
| when referring to E=mc^2. It's almost a dogma by this
| point. But the derivation Einstein used to come up with
| his equation doesn't actually support said dogma. I'd
| really like to understand how this "fundamental
| equivalence" came about and the proof behind it, or if
| it's just dogma. E=mc^2 is a lot more profound than
| E=delta m * c^2. IIRC Einstein in the final sentence of
| his paper tries to generalize his result and jumps on the
| E=mc^2 train without backing it up.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| How? What do you mean by that?
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| Trace amounts of radioisotopes found in the candle will be
| subject to decay while the candle is burned (much as they
| would be while the candle isn't burning), so there would
| presumably be some negligible amount of alpha, beta and/or
| gamma radiation.
| snissn wrote:
| very very very little
| nostromo wrote:
| None, actually.
|
| It's a chemical reaction which means all mass is preserved.
| dheera wrote:
| No, actually, very very little, not zero. The candle
| (summed with its gas emissions) loses mass equal to the
| relativistic mass of the photons emitted. For something
| like a candle it's an undetectably small amount but it's
| not zero.
| nostromo wrote:
| Good catch, thanks.
| Cerium wrote:
| For normal non-nuclear candles the energy obtained through
| breaking chemical bonds and creating outputs with less energy
| contained in the connections between atoms. The matter is not
| destroyed.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Well, sure, but energy=mass; just as an atom's mass is not
| equal to the sum of the protons, neutrons and electrons
| masses but depends also on their binding energy, in the same
| manner, a compound with highly energetic chemical bounds has
| a (very, very slightly) different inertia and gravity than
| the separate components. The difference of this effect
| between atomic and chemical bounds [spelling? English isn't
| my main language] is quantitative, not qualitative; chemical
| bounds have much less energy, so the effect is much smaller,
| so for most purposes it can be considered as insignificantly
| small, but it's still there and not zero.
|
| Any system that loses energy (e.g. releases an energetic
| photon - no matter if it's because of a nuclear or chemical
| reaction) also loses mass, though E=mc^2 means that losing
| reasonable amounts of energy mean losing very, very small
| amounts of mass.
| smithza wrote:
| energy != mass; e=mc^2 declares there is a proportional
| relationship between energy and mass while the speed of
| light, c, squared is the constant of proportionality.
| carlob wrote:
| You can set c to 1 if you want, then energy == mass.
|
| As a matter of fact this is pretty common in particle
| physics where all masses are given in electronvolts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometrized_unit_system
| PeterisP wrote:
| "there is a proportional relationship between energy and
| mass" -> exactly. the mass of the system is strictly
| proportional to its total energy, and changes in the
| energy of a system will have a corresponding proportional
| effect on its mass.
|
| If you split the system into two components and release X
| energy, then the two components will weigh X/c^2 less
| than the whole system did; if splitting the system
| consumed X energy, then the separate components will
| weigh X/c^2 more than the original thing.
| Cerium wrote:
| Thank you for the explanation, that makes perfect sense.
|
| So... the energy content in wax is about 45MJ/kg. An 8 in
| ch taper candle weights about 40g. This means it contains
| about 1.8 MJ of energy.
|
| Of that 40g about 20 nanograms turned into energy! That is
| about 0.5 parts per billion.
| avidiax wrote:
| https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/195696/do-
| chemic...
|
| Seems the unanimous answer is 'yes', which surprised me. I
| considered that chemical bonds are actually changes in
| electromagnetic potential (i.e. similar to the leaves in a
| Leyden jar repelling, converting electrical potential to
| gravitational potential). With no change in mass, I
| expected that the relativity equation would zero.
| PeterisP wrote:
| That's the whole point - the inertial and gravitational
| mass of the system is proportional to the total energy of
| the system; changes in electromagnetic potential affect
| the energy within and thus also the mass as far as
| inertia or gravity is concerned. The same applies for
| electrostatic potential and gravitational potential.
| "Rest mass" is just a form of energy - after all, the
| rest mass of e.g. a block of lead consists mostly of the
| rest mass of protons and neutrons inside, but the rest
| mass of those protons and neutrons does not consist of
| the rest mass of their components, but mostly of the
| binding energy between their quarks - so the block of
| lead weighs as much as (and because of) the stored
| binding energy.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| think about the energy in a candle released via burning vs the
| energy of that same mass viewed through E=mc^2. that's the
| ratio
| graerg wrote:
| No this is a chemical reaction, not a nuclear reaction.
| goro-7 wrote:
| It goes where it came from
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This is in some sense the conclusion of a conversation that has
| been going on for _months_ on TikTok.
|
| People ask Hank Green (of Crash Course/Youtube/etc. fame)
| questions. Sometime last year, someone asked where the wax went
| in a candle when you burn it
| (https://www.tiktok.com/@hankgreen1/video/6890298762032368898).
| Since then, hank has been in a bit of a feud with the collective
| of TikTok, who seem to be unwilling to understand that the wax is
| what burns
| (https://www.tiktok.com/@hankgreen1/video/6955202282313059590),
| despite his many attempts to explain
| (https://www.tiktok.com/@hankgreen1/video/6945244159187897605).
|
| I'm partial to this explanation by another user (https://www.tikt
| ok.com/@tomlumperson/video/69554934350171210...), who also has a
| great tiktok about bees:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@tomlumperson/video/69508366516858585....
|
| Now, nearly 6 months later, the same question has made it to the
| mainstream and is getting asked of Randall Munroe in the NYT.
| [deleted]
| daoxid wrote:
| Reading another article in this series, "Can You Boil an Egg Too
| Long?" [1] really made me smile. Apparently no one knows
| _exactly_ what happens if you boil an egg for multiple months or
| years. This seems such a trivial thing compared to all the other
| stuff humans have discovered. On the other hand this also means
| almost anyone can expand the limits of human knowledge: you just
| need an egg, a reliable source of heat and water, and lots of
| patience. Granted, the knowledge gained may not change the world,
| but you will still be the _first_ who is in possession of that
| knowledge!
|
| [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/science/randall-munroe-
| qu...
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Julia Child's tip on cooking a poached egg:
|
| 1. Poke a small hole with a pin in one side of egg.
|
| 2. Put the whole egg in boiling water for 10 seconds.
|
| 3. Remove egg, and run under cold water. (So you can handle
| it.)
|
| 4. Crack the egg back into the boiling water, and cook.
|
| 5. The poached egg comes out more uniform, and whole.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Does it though? I found a video of Julia using this method,
| but there is also step 4.5 where you crack the egg into an
| egg poacher, which is designed to help keep the egg nicely
| shaped. Maybe it's just the egg poacher doing its job?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvSnUmU509k
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > but you will still be the first who is in possession of that
| knowledge!
|
| Are you sure about that? How do you know that no one has done
| that experiment. Expanding the limits of human knowledge is not
| just about learning something new, but also sharing it in such
| a way that makes it part of humanities general knowledge base
| (even if still restricted to a relativly small group of
| people). Most people do not have the means to establish human
| knowledge in this way; and those that do are generally limited
| to a scope that does not contain hard-boiling eggs.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| You'd probably have to make do with a blog post rather than a
| journal publication.
| lostgame wrote:
| Okay, I got _way_ more of a kick than necessary from the image
| of a map which depicts 'you' traversing from 'the land of
| normal eggs' to '?'.
|
| Also - and more relevant to HN - this is the first time I
| noticed Randall Munroe of xkcd fame has written for the _New
| York Times_. Good job on him for landing that gig! :D
| Someone wrote:
| Also, publishing the result will almost certainly win you an
| Egg Noble prize (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize)
|
| The experiment might not be that simple, though. You would no
| want to boil away all the water.
|
| That means using a closed system (might go BOOM), starting with
| lots of water (expensive), or finding a way to add water while
| keeping the water at boiling temperature (you don't have to add
| cold water, so that is probably not that hard, but not trivial,
| either)
| k__ wrote:
| Fun fact, this is also where fat goes when your body burns it:
| Into the air.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I 'discovered' this as a teenager because my weight in the
| morning would be lower than my weight at night and I had done
| nothing but lie in bed comfy all night. There was only one
| place it could reasonably go - now that I wasn't wetting my bed
| that is.
| enriquto wrote:
| how did you weigh yourself so precisely?
| ta9999 wrote:
| This takes surprisingly little precision, you really exhale
| quite a lot of mass over 8 hours.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Its pretty common to weigh 1lb less in the morning than
| night, don't need a fancy scale for that. But decimal level
| accuracy scales are also common.
| brlcad wrote:
| The amount of mass exhaled as CO2 at night is nowhere near as
| much as the loss through perspiration and evaporation. Water
| loss happens pretty much constantly and is why one dies of
| dehydration after a couple days.
| ajuc wrote:
| I was curious about this. I'm on a diet now and I often
| weight like 0.5-0.8 kg less in the morning.
|
| And when I go on a 20km walk on the weekend I lose about
| 1kg in 5 hours. Is it mostly water? Cause I drink a lot
| during the walk and I don't go fast enough to get sweaty.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes. A _lot_ of fad diets and supplements work on this
| principle; dehydrating you appears to lose weight really
| quickly initially. It 's not sustainable.
| k__ wrote:
| The human body is darn efficient.
|
| You would probably have to run 50-70km to lose 1kg fat.
|
| It's easier to not eat calories than to burn them after
| eating.
| breischl wrote:
| It pretty much has to be. 1kg would be 1L of water, which
| is not that much to lose over 5 hours.
|
| But 1kg of fat is 7700 kcal, which would be a massive
| amount of energy to expend in 5 hours. Unless your
| "walks" involve running uphill with a 25kg pack or
| something like that. :)
| PeterisP wrote:
| Short-term energy consumption on a 5 hour hike would be
| from stored glucose, fat breakdown IMHO would happen
| slower. A 20km hike can consume 1000-2000kcal depending
| on how hard it is (climb, terrain, weight of hiker,
| weight of pack matter) so that would be 0.25-0.5kg of
| carbs - so potentially that loss could be 50/50 carbs and
| water.
|
| But hydration definitely is a big aspect of mass simply
| because of how much you add and lose. I once did a ~90km
| hike in 24 hours or so, and I believe I drank something
| like 15+ litres of liquids during that.
| glial wrote:
| I suppose you could also lose weight via the moisture in your
| breath, or sweat of operation. But yes, it's pretty cool.
| morsch wrote:
| You do lose weight via the moisture, typically around 200g
| if this article[1] is to be trusted (doesn't cite its
| sources). More if you are sweating heavily for one reason
| or another. Much bigger effect than calories burnt in the
| same duration.
|
| [1]
| https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/221338/straight-
| dope...
| 49531 wrote:
| A good demonstration of this by Ruben Meerman:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuIlsN32WaE
| datavirtue wrote:
| Except the fat goes out of your body and the candle is going
| into your body.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I saw a study showing correlation between cognitive
| impairment and sub-micron particles in the air. They used
| candles for the study but coal factories are the large scale
| concern.
| rurp wrote:
| Related to this, I've seen research showing that by the
| time a room feels stuffy there is enough CO2 to measurably
| affect cognitive performance. Now I'm much better about
| remembering to open a window when I'm coding and starting
| to drag.
| jpindar wrote:
| Yet another advantage of remote work! How many offices
| have windows you can open? (I used to work in one that
| did, because it was in an old mill building. It was
| great.)
| withinboredom wrote:
| Highly recommend getting a cheap CO2 meter. We have a
| couple around the house. It's amazing how fast a room
| fills with CO2 when cooking or having people over (pre-
| COVID). You can become more attuned to it -- I have a
| pretty good idea what 800PPM feels like compared to
| 500PPM compared to 1000PPM. Weird party trick too.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| Do you have a recommendation for one? I heard it's quite
| hard to get accurate ones without paying a lot.
| gubby wrote:
| What do they feel like for you? I've had a CO2 sensor in
| my office for a long time, and don't think I can tell the
| difference between 500 and 1500ppm.
| withinboredom wrote:
| It honestly doesn't feel like anything. I just ask my
| body what the number is and it's always within a hundred
| ppm. it feels like a guess, but like a guess when you've
| been counting cards so long you know roughly what the
| count is without consciously keeping track of it? If that
| makes sense.
|
| A couple of years ago, I started getting headaches.
| Everything in my noggin appeared normal, and one day I
| worked with the window open. No headache. So I got my
| first one, it wasn't very expensive (EUR50-100 IIRC) and
| did some experiments. Sure enough, it would get up to
| 1800ppm in my tiny office and I'd get a headache.
|
| I'd say the biggest thing it seems to affect is coding.
| If I can keep it below 600ppm in my office, I can code
| all day and late into the evening without feeling too
| exhausted. At about 1k, I start to feel kinda sleepy and
| tired after awhile.
|
| My wife and kid had fun doing the observations and asking
| the questions during the experiment. Good times. We used
| it as a way to teach our son how to do experiments and
| ethics.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| A quick search shows a ton of choices, Are there any
| models or brands you like, or dislike?
| withinboredom wrote:
| I wasn't too picky, I ended up with tfa dostmann's which
| seemed reasonable in price point vs accuracy.
| k__ wrote:
| You can breath in your burned fat too, if you wish.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Related study, which I found interesting, that confirms the
| weight you "lose" is excreted primarily through your breath:
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/287046#Tracking-th...
| ihaveajob wrote:
| What I find most interesting is that so many people,
| including those with supposed expert knowledge of physiology,
| get this totally wrong.
| zappo2938 wrote:
| On the flip, that tree in your backyard isn't growing out of
| the ground outside of the moisture that falls from the sky --
| if it did the ground would sink -- it is growing out of the
| air.
| api wrote:
| Yep! When you lose weight you slightly increase the mass of the
| atmosphere by roughly the amount you lost. Whatever doesn't go
| into the atmosphere goes into the toilet (mostly water).
| LukeLambert wrote:
| I had no idea Randall Munroe of XKCD has had a column at NYT
| since 2019. His illustration style is so distinct.
| shagie wrote:
| For a while, he was dabbling with long form (rather than pure
| comic) writing.
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com
|
| Its more than a dabble - there are 157 of them, but that's the
| type of thing that a paper looking for original content and
| writing would like.
|
| The last what-if was published in May of 2018.
| ctdonath wrote:
| Those were compiled into a physical book. The online content
| stopped shortly after; pity.
| shagie wrote:
| The book was published in '14 (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_If%3F_(book) ) . The
| what if long form continued on for another four years.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| There have been occasional grumblings for a couple of years
| now that the humour of the XKCD webcomic has declined, Munroe
| just doesn't seem to have his mind on the job now that he is
| doing these other projects. However, the what-if and pop-
| science explanatory stuff is generally of very good quality,
| so on balance one can't really complain.
| vardump wrote:
| Well, he certainly has already contributed his fair share,
| and most of it totally free, not even banner ads.
| ce4 wrote:
| Same here. I was intrigued by both writing style and then the
| way the diagram was drawn. Scrolled up and sure enough i found
| it's from Randall Munroe, as expected :)
| gmuslera wrote:
| After watching the first illustration went up and confirmed
| that was Randall Munroe the one that wrote it. I've been
| missing for too long his what-if posts.
|
| Still, would be nice to have his typical mouseover messages.
| smegger001 wrote:
| I was wondering what happened to those I figured he was just
| writting book of them now so he wasn't going to post them for
| free.
| niij wrote:
| Paywall bypass: https://archive.is/9IOgm
| [deleted]
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