Trees

[sonicbomb]

Richard Feynman famously stated “...trees are made of air, primarily. When they are burned, they go back to air, and in the flaming heat is released the flaming heat of the Sun which was bound in to convert the air into tree. And in the ash is the small remnant of the part which did not come from air, that came from the solid earth, instead.”

But how much air?
The following is a rough estimate as there are huge variables, which air which tree etc.

Trees are about 50% water and 50% carbon.
At 0 °C and normal sea level pressure a cubic meter of air weighs 1.3 kilos.
Air is 0.04% CO2 of which 27% is carbon. So a cubic meter of air contains 14 grams of carbon.
An average adult Oak tree weighs 14 tons of which 7 tons is carbon.

So this average Oak tree would need to process half a million cubic meters of air to build itself.

 

[sonicbomb]

By the way my maths is terrible, so I probably got this wrong.

 

[Anise]

Thanks! I always wanted to know this

 

[bombastinator]

I vaguely remember a biology class where an early scientific experiment was described.

this guy did an experiment in the late 19th/early 20th century where he took some buckets and grew trees in them while weighing everything the entire time. They got a LOT heavier. He measured everything afterward as well. Trees arent exactlymade of pure carbon. They’re made mostly of a great big sugar called cellulose. Cellulose has a lot of carbon in it though, and there was a LOT more total carbon after the tree grew than before. All packed up in the cellulose. The only place it could have come from was the outside air.

That “half air half carbon” thing may be a massive over simplification but it could be right. How much carbon a given plant processes and locks up depends on the plant. Iirc it’s called “respiration rate” or something. I think. Classes were a long time ago for me.

 

[Anise]

All sarcasm aside, I don't get it. I'm well educated but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Unless you're saying there's carbon in the air.

 

[sonicbomb]

All sarcasm aside, I don't get it. I'm well educated but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Unless you're saying there's carbon in the air.

Air is 0.04% CO2 of which 27% is carbon. So a cubic meter of air contains 14 grams of carbon.

 

[sonicbomb]

this guy did an experiment in the late 19th/early 20th century where he took some buckets and grew trees in them while weighing everything the entire time.

Johaan Baptista Van Helmholt

 

[sonicbomb]

For me the the shocker was when I started trying to research this was that a cubic meter of air weighs so much. Then not so much when you consider that at sea level it has a column of air about 300 miles high sitting on top of it.

 

[bombastinator]

All sarcasm aside, I don't get it. I'm well educated but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Unless you're saying there's carbon in the air.

The post is in the lounge, which is a general topic area. I’m not quite sure what exactly the OP is getting at either. Maybe nothing. It could just be a “today I found out..” kind of thing. It seems to be a sort of foreshortened way of thinking about carbon in the air and why environmentalists are so scared about the burning of the Amazon. I’m not sure.

Air is made of a bunch of stuff. To make it worse it’s composed of various layers which have different things in them.
Atmosphere of Earth - Wikipedia
One of those things is CO2 though which is what plants breathe most of the time, and is 1/3rd carbon. When people talk about “carbon footprint” it’s generally referring to how many tons of carbon they are putting into the air. Plants ARE capable of filtering out that carbon and using it to make cellulose though.

 

[Irked Particle]

Feynman for the win!

I wish I could've had a fireside chat with that man before he died. He could've played the bongos while I played guitar, & together we could've unravelled the secrets of the universe.

 

[Letitia]

Appreciate an interesting break in the work day Sonic.

 

[sonicbomb]

The post is in the lounge, which is a general topic area. I’m not quite sure what exactly the OP is getting at either.

Because science dude, maybe you over think things sometimes.