I read the webcomic User Friendly every day, so I got a kick out of this one (click to see the whole comic):
I don’t have 99 bucks for the last option, and honestly, $6 x 1025 seems a bit pricey per mole*. Avagadro’s mole, that is, not Scarlett’s.
* Of course, it’s only half that price per atom.
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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July 6th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hey that’s cheap per mole of dioxide, consider buying an anti-dioxide mole? LOL
July 6th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Hmmm… I think I will adobt the one in which it was originally a coke co2.
All sarcasm aside, that is funny ^_^
July 6th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Oh, Phil, having 22.5 Liters of oxygen is a bit of an overkill.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Hmmm – sounds like a ripoff of Primo Levi’s Periodical Table. The last chapter, “Carbon”.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:35 am
I hope they don’t try to keep Scarlett Johansson from breathing to drive up the price…
July 6th, 2008 at 11:39 am
Didn’t you once write an article about star registries? Ah! I found it.
http://www.csicop.org/si/2006-05/stars.html
July 6th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Beware! Oxygen builds radicals!
Doesn’t “O”sama gets his name fron this?
July 6th, 2008 at 11:42 am
fron = from
/Meh.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:48 am
If antimatter Scarlet Johansson inhaled and exhaled antimatter-dioxide, it would be just tad pricer for a mole at $15 x 10^{35}.
July 6th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
With my COPD and emphesema, I think I have received all of those mols from my concentrator and/or tanks with a hose stuck up my nose 24/7 and it’s costing more than any of those.
Larry
July 6th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Thanks for the offer, but I’ve already got one. Mine has the added distinction of being the last oxygen molecule breathed in by the last T. Rex 65,369,121 years ago (give or take a week).
And if you believe that then you can have it for only ninety nine ninety nine ninety nine…
July 6th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Sili: Actually to be fair, to me it’s very reminiscent of those little sidebar notes that I occasionally saw in kid’s science books. I remember once reading as a kid that every breath you inhale includes something like 10,000 oxygen atoms inhaled by Leonardo da Vinci, which blew my little mind well before “The Periodic Table” was written (much less translated into English).
July 6th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Oh yeah? Well my house is made of atoms that were once part of dead stars.
July 6th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
OT: I vaguely recall reading that some indigenous people in South America recognized Uranus as a planet before it was discovered by astronomy in 1781. Can anyone corroborate my memory? If true, this would be an astonishing feat: Uranus is barely visible to the naked eye at approximately magnitude 5.7; who would be observing thousands of faint stars carefully enough to notice that one of them moves slowly along the ecliptic? Especially without writing to help record observations?
July 6th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I don’t get it. A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it’s almost certain that I’ve breathed in one of each of these within the last day.
July 6th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Yep. If you still don’t get it, maybe you should click through to see the comic’s title.
July 6th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
OK, does that O drawing make anyone else think of Homer Simpson reaching for something in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator?
July 6th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
@ Mena,
No, but now it does!
July 6th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
yeah, but when you combust h2 in 02, you wind up with the deadly chemical dhmo!
July 6th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
I thought blue was nitrogen…anyway it looks like Smurf buttocks. If you can get a mere 5 more you can make gold.
July 6th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
I’ll eagerly adopt one of the Scarlett Johansson molecules, on the following conditions:
A. She’s a skeptic
B. I can personally verify the Scarlett Johansson inhalation/exhalation of the molecule.
C. Okay, okay! I’m not an unreasonable man. I’ll accept on condition B all by itself.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:04 am
I paid around $35.00 to name a star after my husband for his 30th birthday almost 8 years ago. Yep, they got me. I have the “official” paper they sent me with his star’s location framed on a wall in my office as a reminder of how far my little skeptical self has come in the last 8 years.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:16 am
I don’t mean to nitpick but I thought a blog with as high a nerd quotient as BA would do better. A mole, 6*10^25? to the 25? really!?! I’m not going to sweat you the significant figures but I guess to an astronomer only being over by two orders of magnitude isn’t that big of a deal, but if I bought a car and the dealer overcharged me by x100 I’d be pretty miffed.
July 7th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Am I out of touch that I only vaguely know who Scarlett Johansson is? She acts or something, right?
July 7th, 2008 at 12:33 am
I think I saw this offer to adopt molecules once in the New Zork Times…
July 7th, 2008 at 1:06 am
QD, I ‘ve heard her described as “thinking man’s crumpet”.
Only repeating what I’ve heard. Honestly. Don’t taze me bro’.
July 7th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I took 21 comments to get to Gabes?
Et tu, The Chemist?
July 7th, 2008 at 6:37 am
QD, Scarlet Johansson is not only very pretty, she is usually in pretty good movies too.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Gabe:
6×10^23 x $100 = $6×10^25
right?
July 7th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Amedeo Avogadro