I mean, you can heat any old rock & make it look like that ... what I'm saying is that every rock, when heated to 500+°C, will gain delicious orange flavour, but scientists don't want you to know that!!
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2025
784 points (99.0% liked)
Science Memes
15536 readers
2508 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I was about to say that in the 40s and 50s someone ~~probably~~ taste it.
The best way to tell precisely how spicy your rock is, is to taste it. That's just basic science, if you ask me.
Given that lead acetate is sweet, would plutonium acetate do the same?
anyone wants to help me set up a charity where we give "last meals" to terminal patients using toxic ingredients just for them to describe how they taste?
Zomg, where are all the warning labels???
Fun fact: a gram of plutonium contains about 20 billion calories. Yum.
And it goes straight to my hips. By which I mean the bone marrow in my pelvis.
These hips don't lie : you got cancer
load more comments
(2 replies)
This is a commonly quoted fun fact that is not really true. There are 2 different definitions of calorie. One means the absolute amount of energy in an object, the other means the bioavailable amount of energy that a human can extract from it using their digestive system.
So every physical object that exists has some amount of potential energy contained within it which we can express in calories, but that doesn't mean it has any bioavailable calories. For example glass has some significant amount of energy contained within it, but it has 0 bioavailable calories.
This "fun fact" mixes up the two definitions, making the statement meaningless.
(Nothing against you OP, this is a commonly repeated falsehood)
this is a commonly repeated ~~falsehood~~ obvious joke
And, if I have to explain the joke: it's just E=mc² (the Einstein thing ... well, the Einstein's thing's approximation), the energy (E) is the same for all mass (m) since the c is a constant.
You get the same 21 billon kcal from 1g of apples as from 1g of plutonium.
And since it's usually well known humans do not devour mass into pure energy that might trigger ppls sense of humour.
(Additionally the idea of eating metal to seek nutrition might be funny, but we do need some metals \m/.)
Also "potential energy" phrasing is weird in that context.
There are 2 different definitions of calorie.
This "fun fact" mixes up the two definitions
It's not even two definitions, the kcal is absolutely the same, it's just used to measure two different things (mass energy vs the sum of what an average human can extract via chemical processes). I see you def understand that, but it's not a different definition of a calorie (in the same way as length vs width of an object isn't a different definition of a metre).
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Not dietal calories.
The calorie numbers we assign to food, measure how much energy our body extracts from them when eaten.
In this context, plutonium is closer to 0
If we instead want to measure the actual total physical energy content of materia, we would turn to E=mc^2, telling us that a gram of anything has about 20 million kcal, no matter if its plutonium or diet coke. which is a slightly less useful value on food labels :D
This is actually an issue with food calories as well. Wood shavings give a high reading in a bomb calorimeter but you can't process them into energy. Same with lots of fiber. And ethanol, in some cases.
Technically it measures how much you can heat up a known volume of water if you burn the food. We have no way of measuring how much of that energy released by combustion actually gets absorbed and translated to ATP in the body, but it’s the best estimation we have of the relative energy content of foods.
There’s some carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that our bodies don’t seem to convert to energy (or only partially convert) but still technically contain “calories” because they’re combustible. Sugar alcohols, fiber, etc.
Plutonium doesn’t combust, but it would heat up water in a calorimeter. Really the test method’s applicability kind of falls apart when you start testing undigestible materials.
Plutonium actually does combust^1^. Even worse, it's pyrophoric^2^. I couldn't easily find kcal/g though.
- ^1^ Whoopie
- ^2^ Not a great source
I did a little digging. The heat of decay (so plutonium 238 just sitting around, not burning) is about .48 kcal/hr per gram. So if we were able to convert that energy to ATP like we do carbohydrates, eating about 300g of plutonium would be like eating a twinkie (150kcal) every hour. In about 88 years the energy output of that plutonium would have reduced to about a half-twinkie per hour.
Assuming you need 2000 kcal per day to maintain weight, that’s only 83 kcal per hour needed. So, if you could survive eating it and actually utilize the energy generated, you’d be set for life on food after eating less than 300g. We’d have to come up with a dosing schedule or you’d have to work out pretty hard as a young person to keep from getting fat.
The heat of combustion for plutonium based on a very cursory search (take it with a grain of salt) is about 1 kcal/g. So assuming your body could oxidize it, you’d get a one-time burst of about 2 twinkies worth of energy immediately upon eating that 300g.
load more comments
(1 replies)
If you eat just one bite you'll never have to eat again for the rest of your life!
Equivalent-level of fun fact: 1 gram of hay contains that much calories too!
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Please reconsider
Yeah. That looks like something Codyslab will do...
Wtf, no, you should not lick boron, fucking ever. Go lick a piece of lead, it's better for your health
Wish we had this in chemistry
load more comments
(4 replies)
We need a cosmological law dictating harmful to humans = boring-looking. I mean, it isn't just plutonium, look at uranium yellowcake! It's lemon flavouring!
that looks like a sponge x3
It looks like the underside of a microfiber towel
load more comments
(2 replies)
I like how all these pictures include the radiation fucking up the photo.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Isn't it just that color because it's hot? Like, if you cooled those off to room temperature, wouldn't they be metallic gray?
Cooling down means it's breaking down and no longer plutonium.
I'm talking about thermally cooling it down. If you put it in a freezer it will cool down, but the nuclear process will not change speed.
Good luck with cooling down unmoderated plutonium.
liquid nitrogen will do
That’s why they have it in a frying pan
load more comments
(2 replies)
Forbidden gum drop
And here I thought plutonium looked like this:
Kinda, in solution different oxidation states make pretty colors... 
This whole image is metal as fuck \m/
if you can wait a few million years, after few decay steps it turns into lead, which is known to be sweet
Yes, it does look delicious.
But I can't help but think about this being the consequences of dying everything we eat unholy colors. Maybe radioactive material wouldn't be so tasty looking if we didn't give kids candy that looks like radioactive material.
load more comments
(2 replies)
What would happen if you played hockey with that?
The ice melts.
And you get cancer
A lot of people get cancer already and ice also already melts all the time so I don't see why this is so special
That's plutonium. You would die of radiation poisoning long before you could ever even come close to developing cancer.
Deliciously ever-hot orange pie
view more: next ›