“This was highly enlightening the first time I watched it :)”
Highly enlightening video on tree mass.
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"Where do trees get their mass?" - this video This was highly enlightening the first time I watched it :)
Where Do Trees Get Their Mass?
2.5M views · Mar 12, 2012 · 4:10 · 3 HN recommenders · 4 mentions · discussed 2015–2021
Veritasium asks people where a tree's mass comes from, then explains that most of a dry tree's mass originates from carbon dioxide in the air. It combines street interviews with a short explanation of photosynthesis.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN uses it as the go-to demonstration of how unintuitive mass conservation is, especially in weight loss and burning threads.
“Veritasium has a fun video demonstrating how unintuitive this is”HN comment, 2017
What Hacker News said 4
“There's a nice Veritasium episode wherein he asks people on the street where a tree's mass comes from”
Street interviews on where tree mass comes from, as a learning exercise.
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There's a nice Veritasium episode wherein he asks people on the street where a tree's mass comes from: this video (This isn't just one of those "let's laugh at how dumb people on the street are" videos; it's done explicitly as a learning exercise. His PhD looked at how addressing misconceptions and going from there to correct explanations works much better than simply providing explanations: link ) I thought of it upon seeing the first chart in the BMJ article.)
“Veritasium has a fun video demonstrating how unintuitive this is”
Fun demonstration of how unintuitive tree mass is.
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An interesting corollary to this is "Where do trees get their mass?" Veritasium has a fun video demonstrating how unintuitive this is: this video
“everyone thought a tree's mass came from the soil”
Shows people think a tree's mass comes from soil.
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And the reverse biochemical process is equally misunderstood. I used to teach high school Science and everyone thought a tree's mass came from the soil. this video