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Where Do Trees Get Their Mass?

Veritasium3 HN recommenders · 2015–2021
2.5M views · explainer · evergreen · Uploaded 2012-03-12

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.

HN uses it as the go-to demonstration of how unintuitive mass conservation is, especially in weight loss and burning threads.

Scientific method & science communicationBiology & biotechnologyEveryday physics & science demos

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4 comments from Hacker News

@MarcScott2015 · in “When You Lose Weight, Where Does It Go?”

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. [VIDEO]

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@lkbm2015 · in “When You Lose Weight, Where Does It Go?”

There's a nice Veritasium episode wherein he asks people on the street where a tree's mass comes from: [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.)

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@JshWright2017 · in “When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?”

An interesting corollary to this is "Where do trees get their mass?" Veritasium has a fun video demonstrating how unintuitive this is: [VIDEO]

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@lathiat2021 · in “Where does a candle go when it burns?”

"Where do trees get their mass?" - [VIDEO] This was highly enlightening the first time I watched it :)

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