Where does a tree get its mass?
thelastpsychiatrist.com
Where does a tree get its mass?
1–10 of 61 posts
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#2This reminds me of a snippet from Buckminster Fuller's "Critical Path". He's talking about specialists and generalists and how we rarely see the big picture of what's important.
"Nobody is born a specialist. Every child is born with comprehensive interests, asking the most comprehensively logical and relevant questions. Pointing to the logs burning in the fireplace, one child asked me, "What is fire?" I answered, "Fire is the Sun unwinding from the tree's log. The Earth revolves and the trees revolve as the radiation from the Sun's flame reaches the revolving planet Earth. By photosynthesis the green buds and leaves of the tree convert that Sun radiation into hydrocarbon molecules, which form into the bio-cells of the green, outer, cambium layer of the tree."
http://www.maebrussell.com/Critical%20Path/Critical%20Path%2...
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#3The example is not all that potent. before the link even loaded, the following flashes through my head:
'well of course carbon from the air. ... oh, and water. They have a lot of water.'
He tries to use something pretty clear cut, like mass and trees (mass is mass, and trees are pretty typically also trees) as an analogue to something inherently vague- psychiatry in this case. Whether someone is bipolar is way more up to interpretation than whether something that weights 100kg has a mass of 100kg or not.
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#4This forget's about all the H as a tree get's most of it's hydrogen from water.
EX:"Glucose" (C6H12O6) is from 6 * H20 + 6 * C02 => C6H12O6 + 6 * O2.
So a reasonable ansewer would be mostly air and water with some minirals from the soil.
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#5This forget's about all the H as a tree get's most of it's hydrogen from water. EX:"Glucose" (C6H12O6) is from 6 * H20 + 6 * C02 => C6H12O6 + 6 * O2. So a reasonable ansewer would be mostly air and water with some minirals from the soil.
Uh, the second "section" on the page basically says about the same thing :)
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#6This forget's about all the H as a tree get's most of it's hydrogen from water. EX:"Glucose" (C6H12O6) is from 6 * H20 + 6 * C02 => C6H12O6 + 6 * O2. So a reasonable ansewer would be mostly air and water with some minirals from the soil.
Uh, the second "section" on the page basically says about the same thing :)
Some trees are more than 50% water by mass
This is true, but missing my point. A lot of a trees weight is water but the H in it's DNA is from watter but not still water.
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#7Excellent. After the first line I deliberately closed my eyes and tried to re-reason it (and got it right, thankfully). It was quite refreshing to have a blog post make you actually stop and really think for a second.
The point was good as well. ;)
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh, the second "section" on the page basically says about the same thing :)
Some trees are more than 50% water by mass This is true, but missing my point. A lot of a trees weight is water but the H in it's DNA is from watter but not still water.
Yes, and the question was where does the tree get it's mass from.
I suppose you could look at it in the twisted sense of 'what in the tree contributes so much to it's mass', but that's a rather tortured use of English.
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some trees are more than 50% water by mass This is true, but missing my point. A lot of a trees weight is water but the H in it's DNA is from watter but not still water.
Yes, and the question was where does the tree get it's mass from. I suppose you could look at it in the twisted sense of 'what in the tree contributes so much to it's mass', but that's a rather tortured use of English.
If the meant "50% of the mass of some trees is from water" that then he should have said so. Some trees are more than 50% water by mass is a true statement, but it means something else.
The author saying something related to the truth, but I think he has a poor understanding of what is going on. Reading that I felt like a teacher who wants to give some created for a student using the correct words while realizing they don't quite get it.
As to precision it's more accurate to say 3 +/- 0.5 times 101 +/- 0.5 = 256.25 to 355.25 or 305.75 +/- 49.5 than to just say 300. For an extreme example (1 +/- .1) ^ 1,000 can be any ware from ~2.47e41 to ~1.748e-46.
PS: "Dead stars" is a reasonable if incomplete answer to the same question, but context matters so it's not acceptable on a botany or chemistry exam. In the same way that Air + Soil + Water would be missing the point on an astronomy exam.
Re: Where does a tree get its mass?
#10The analogy at the end (section IV) made the whole article easier to "get".
...an answer cannot be more precise than its data. Or its question.