![[1210] Elementary, My Dear Sandra!](/comics/2020-09-17-1210-elementary-my-dear-sandra.png "[1210] Elementary, My Dear Sandra!")
- Cloud: The human body contains around 250 quadrillion atoms of this element.
- Sandra: Hmm…
- Sandra: That sounds low for oxygen or carbon, so it’s probably something like iron.
- Cloud: It’s uranium!
- Sandra: What?!
- Yuna: The makers of your card game may want to add a zero to that number…
- Ye Thuza: Yuna!
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It’s “uranium” in English.
@ edderiofer:
Auf Englisch, “Uran” bedeutet eine Art Eidechse.
According to https://www.thoughtco.com/how-many-atoms-are-in-human-body-603872
uranium 2E17 which is 200,000,000,000,000,000
Whereas “250 quadrillion” is 250,000,000,000,000,000
The game is right and Yuna needs to take “remedial physics”
@ Mark:
Yuna has just caused a criticality accident, times ten is still too much though.
Mark wrote:
The game probably was published before Yuna’s little accident in panel 2. …
@ Mark:
Short or long notation 😉
Mark wrote:
Yuna’s physics is often questionable, but she makes things happen, even though the rest of us science-types would not be able to reproduce anything using many of her methods. Maybe around her household, there is an extra order of magnitude of uranium in their bodies, due to the kinds of things she does around the house. Maybe the extra zero is at the end, after the decimal point. Mind adding 0 does not really change things.
@ David Nuttall:
The point is that Yuna was playing with a pile in the background. It is not large enough to go critical without moderation even if it were metallic U-238, but in the first panel, she was removing a piece of something in a hurry. It might have been a piece of moderator or U-238, bringing the pile to critical, with Yuna noting it just in time. Thus, it might be possible that the crumbling of the pile was due to a very low-level criticality fizzle, which would vaporise some of the uranium, adding the zero in the body uranium content for everyone present.
Seriously, though, you wouldn’t survive a fizzle if you are in the same room with a pile that goes critical. But this is S&W, with a creative approach to physics. I like the joke.
more to the point this is yuna’s approach to phisics. she has a black hole in a box in her room
Ever wondered how chemical elements are pronounced in German? Now you can stop wondering!
Nice illustration just how many atoms there are. A human body consists of 7E27 atoms, so even a relatively large number of uranium atoms (2E17) are just 0.000000003 % of all atoms, or 50 – 90 µg in an adult.
One should also note that most uranium comes from natural sources and is not particularly radioactive (U238). Typical limits for tap water are 10-30 µg/l. Mineral waters may sometimes contain higher uranium content.
@ Sinch:
@ Lurker 2:
I don’t think that’s a fission reactor.
Looks like one of her cold-fusion generators, probably left over from the “lava moat” fiasco.
Either way though, enough neutrons released that everybody in the room will be entering the Afterlife well before Larisa. Seeoahtlahmakaskay might save them (if she’s not on vacation.).
Glad to see the English version was corrected. 🙂
Wait… In German version, Cloud say “250 biliarden”. It is, in European system, 250×10↑12.
In English version, he say “250 quadrillion”. It is 250×10↑15.
It’s uranus.
Someone needed to say that.
@ Hegel Marx:
It’s the same, 250*10^15.
Million = million = 10^6
Milliarde = billion = 10^9
Billion = trillion = 10^12
Billiarde = quadrillion = 10^15
@ Mark:
The number is higher because Yuna botched a nuclear experiment behind them
mxax wrote:
Och, yes, Novil & you are right!
Are those cadmium bricks to produce avelanche fission in subcritical mass by reflecting neutrons back???
thats demon core nuke…
@ Mark:
Or, if written in long scale, 250 billiards (i.e. 1/4 of a trillion).
David Nuttall wrote:
You calling Yuna a Spark?
Did – did Yuna just cause a small-scale nuclear incident?
The sound… that sound the pile made… it sounds like Highrise. http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/highrise/
@ Mark:
I think the joke here is that the game is right doe normal people, but due to Yuna’s constant experiments, the number is a lot higher for Cloud.
A tenfold increase, not great, not terrible…
Of course Sandra would have an accurate idea of orders of magnitude. Of course
Tickling the dragon’s tail, are we, Yuna?
@ Paeris Kiran:
Right idea, wrong material.
Cadmium absorbs neutrons, which is why it’s used to dampen/stop reactors.
You want beryllium or another substance from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_reflector
I wonder if she means that pretty soon EVERYONE will have about 10x the uranium they would have had before her tinkerings…
@ Mark:
I thought Yuna was implying that she just exposed everyone there to a lot of uranium atoms, perhaps enough to increase the number present in their bodies by about one order of magnitude, but… I could be wrong.
It’s a lego cold fusion reactor running on princess Mononoke action figures http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2019/10/21/1124-yuna-is-full-of-energy/, used and possibly damaged in the lava moat fiasco
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2020/07/09/1193-the-b-boys/
http://www.sandraandwoo.com/2020/08/18/1203-crossover/
Is Yuna saying that because she suspects she just added uranium to local people’s bodies, or because she suspects a higher uranium content in Cloud and Sandra specifically may have been the cause for her little reactor becoming unstable there?
@ Roguebfl:
Are you saying she isn’t a Spark? Because the preponderance of evidence suggests she is.
Frank wrote:
It doesn’t even really need to be a good estimate of orders of magnitude. You just need to estimate, “a quadrillion is way less than a mole.*” More precisely, 2.5 x 10^17 << 6.022 x 10^23 (Avogadro's number).
A mole of carbon would only weigh about 12 grams, which already stretches the imagination as quite low. Less than a millionth of that? Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen would all be in a similar boat, as they (with Carbon) are the four major building blocks of organic life, and the heaviest of those is about 16 g / mol.
Based on Sandra's guess of iron, I doubt she had carefully considered the orders of magnitude after all – low tens of micrograms of iron doesn't sound very plausible, either, but at least it's in the right direction from C and O, both in terms of being less common and larger total mass for the same number of atoms.
* Since S&W is set in the US, it's safe to assume short notation. Long notation is generally regarded as a curiosity in the US, not unlike like a strange beast in a zoo… at least to those who have heard of it at all. Interestingly, the nine extra orders of magnitude 250 quadrillion gets from the long notation would bring it to about the right order of magnitude for the number of Carbon atoms in an average adult human body.
EvilMidnightLurker wrote:
I note the lack of fez wearing minions 😉
@ roguebfl:
That just means she’s not a Heterodyne. Anyway, minions are a big responsibility and Yuna is a little young to take proper care of them.
Just a notion to the many comments on Uranium in the human body: The number 2 x E17 is deviated from the 22 micro grams that we estimate is in an average European 70 kg human body; a so-called “reference man”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9406286/
The slightly higher 2.5 x E17 is thus very believable if you weigh in at 80-90 kg, which probably is more close to an as an actual average adult male weight than 70 kg.
Oh god, was she doing a Demon Core test?!
@ Chris:
It has to be the former, because the latter is too small to be relevant. The water in the surrounding human bodies would have more effect on the reactivity of the core than any uranium in them (water is a powerful moderator and neutron reflector, so having significant quantities of water nearby will tend to increase the reaction rate).
@ Sinch:
Sinch wrote:
She needs to stop modeling those graphite shielded experimental reactors!
Chernobyl much?