• ddh
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    792 months ago

    If we could consume uranium, you could have a teaspoon’s worth and be done with eating for the rest of your life.

      • @Trollception@sh.itjust.works
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        252 months ago

        I wonder if that’s actually factual or not. Uranium by itself isn’t too terribly dangerous. It’s the whole fission byproducts thing that’s the buzz kill.

          • @chaogomu@lemmy.world
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            32 months ago

            Interestingly, no. It’s not the same as if you ate a chunk of lead.

            Lead binds to calcium channels, and then blocks them. This makes it a bit of a neurotoxin. It also accumulates in the bones.

            Uranium on the other hand is one of the heavy metals that the body is good a filtering out of the blood. The body is not as good at expelling the uranium. It accumulates in the kidney. This can lead to kidney disease, and other related issues. And that’s just the chemical toxicity of Uranium. Add in the radioactive side of things, and you have a truly distinct form of metal poisoning.

        • @KiwiHuman@lemm.ee
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          92 months ago

          Also it depends on the isotope of uranium. Something you could find naturally isn’t too dangerous, but something enriched too be used as fuel or for wepons is significantly more radioactive.

    • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      12 months ago

      I have a uranium rock which I could conceivably swallow - probably closer to a tablespoon than a teaspoon. I don’t think any process in my body could extract energy from it.

      Alpha radiation is not too bad. Unshielded helium particles. Like I tell anyone I show my rock too - as long as you don’t eat it, this is safe. (I am a mad scientist who has exposed hundreds if not thousands of children to uranium lol)

      Really, if you could extract the energy from the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, you’d never have to eat again. But also because that’s too much energy for you and you would be dead.

      • @dQw4w9WgXcQ@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Antimatter doesn’t really do anything by it’s own, but if we let 1 kg react with 1 kg of matter (non-anti-matter), we get E = mc2 with m = 2 kg. So 1.8 * 1017 J, or 1.8 * 1011 MJ. If we assume that 10 MJ/kg is represented by about 1 cm, the bar would have to be 1.8 * 1010 cm or about 1.8 * 108 m. A standard A4 piece of paper is about 30 cm tall, so 6.0 * 108 A4 papers are needed. I.e. 600 million papers.

        So we definitely have enough paper, but it would be a very tall stack.

        • Lv_InSaNe_vL
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          2 months ago

          That’s only about 180,000km (~112,000 miles) or just under half way to the moon.

          Also some quick googling says an average desktop printer can print about 30,000 pages per month, so it would take 20,000 months (~1670 years) to print that out. And a typical toner cartridge can print 3,000 pages and costs $80, so it would take 200,000 toner cartridges and cost $16 million.

          Now, those aren’t based on any specific model, just the first result in Google haha

  • @ThePyroPython@lemmy.world
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    122 months ago

    Yes boss, I did work out the dynamic range of that log amplifier we wanted to use in our next product’s sensor PCB, it’s 80dB.

    The results are over here. (points to a roll of A-4 paper)

    It has 40 data points and only took me 1 week, 10 pencils, and 20 erasers to plot the chart. Yeah I can present it, it’ll take me 10 minutes to roll it out, pin it down, and fetch the A-frame ladder.

    • @qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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      2 months ago

      This is the real big brain hack with decibels — you can use a linear scale, it’s just that the units are logarithmic instead.

      (Yes I know most people would call a dB axis logarithmic, it’s just a silly comment.)

  • Terrarium [none/use name]
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    82 months ago

    Log scales are great but cannot be understood by the vast majority of people. They simply aren’t taught to a level of comprehension.

    • In the same way biofuels are: Technically yes, but still not that great of an idea outside special applications. (One I could imagine would be someone wanting to live completely off grid using filtered frying oil in an old-but-ridiculously-sturdy diesel generator)

  • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Weird thing I’ve noticed:

    Logs are taught in high school. Absolutely no one seems to remember what they are after the unit test, much less high school. I’ve even reminded other math instructors about how to use them.

    Why do people have such a hard time learning to use and understand logs?

    I love this comic, and it’s going to replace my weird “let’s talk about how this makes the distance between us and Alpha Centauri, and us and Earendil easier to understand” bit.

    • @WarlordSdocy@lemm.ee
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      12 months ago

      I mean I think a lot of it is that at least in America when it comes to Math a lot of the teaching is more about how to use specific formulas and apply them to certain kinds of problems. They don’t really teach you what it is you’re actually doing or why you’re doing it. It just turns into recognizing a type of problem and applying a certain tool to it rather than understanding what that tool is and what it does.

  • woodenghost [comrade/them]
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    42 months ago

    Wonder what that would look like the even more extreme case of matter-anti-matter?

    By the way, energy density is exactly what you look for in bombs. It says nothing about energy prices per joule. It’s also great for nuclear submarines or nuclear powered aircraft carriers. So war, basically. Light from the sun has a pretty low energy density, yet powers live on earth.

      • @MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Yep, radiation pressure. Which is a limiting factor for star size too: too big and the radiation pressure gets stronger than the gravity, blows them appart.

    • Lovable Sidekick
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      2 months ago

      Okay but since you’re the one trying to make a point by saying that, it’s really up to you to add the cost and show that the results really do make the point you want to make.

      • @arakhis_@feddit.org
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        22 months ago

        its a post about uranium being at the top, so the message should be about primary energy generation (unlike sugar -nutritional energy, which is also in the pic)

        Cost per gigawatt of installed capacity: Nuclear power: 7–10 billion euros per GW.
        While Wind energy (onshore): 1–2 billion euros per GW. Wind energy (offshore): 2–4 billion euros per GW. Solar energy: 500 million to 1 billion euros per GW.

        This is evident if you just look at the nuclear power companies like france (who is heavily into nuclear): State-owned EDF - 70 billion euro debt. These companies can’t stay afloat because its that unlucrative and therefore need heavy subsidies.

        Then you have environmental cost, which is the funny part, because we cant even evaluate the potential of the damage since we dont understand the effects fully. The scale in the cartoon is literally comedic compared to the half-life of nuclear waste. like 24000 years for plutonium and for uranium over billions