"No parenting class would have ever prepared me for having my kid ask me why we don't need artificial oxygen storage."
No, but a grade school science class would have...
Yeah this is mindboggling. It wouldn't have ever crossed her mind to tell her kid that they don't need oxygen canisters on this planet? I mean, what the dad said is good, as it opened the door to some more learning... but wow.
Never underestimate just how clueless the general population is about how the world works. More than you'd expect would prove to not really grasp even the most basic mechanisms of their environment.
People turn to religion for a reason.
To the majority of people, understanding the world beyond "inexplicable god magic" is difficult to learn good-for-nothing trivia unless it's needed for a good grade and maybe a job if you're cut out for it. Only the parts specific to surviving in the wild get a different treatment.
Even the non-religious seem to make a habit of thinking like this. The kind of "not a Christian" alcoholic that is completely disinterested in the actual philosophies that allowed for a world where open disbelief is safe, and vocally in favor of "rights" of some sort for currently relevant minorities, with maybe a rare acknowledgement of some surface-level misunderstanding of humanitarian ethics.
Pump the brakes.
She isn't saying that she doesn't know about photosynthesis. She is saying she didn't understand what the child was actually asking about.
There is a world of difference between knowing the answer and understanding the question, especially if the question was asked by someone who doesn't even really know what they're trying to ask either.
You completely missed the point.
This was about the elegance of the answer, not the answer itself.
My first thought, when I heard that question, would be "do we have a backup in case the naturally produced oxygen for some reason goes away?" like some families have an emergency supply of food or water, not that the child did not know that Earth's atmosphere naturally contains oxygen thanks to plants.
I mean... I know perfectly well that plants produce oxygen, but it never would've occurred to me that that was waht a child asking about oxygen tanks wanted to know.
It wasn't about wanting to know about photosynthesis, the original question was really about the oxygen tanks. Kids very often are looking for a simple answer. Even though the real answer is far more complex.
As a Dad who helped raise 4 Daughters, (a CPA, a Triage Nurse, PHD Mech Engineer, and a Computer Forensic Expert for the FBI), teaching at home is a crucial part of parenting. Beyond offering a wide variety of materials to learn from, (we built a library of books that filled my office), and being ready to answer those oxygen tank questions, you need to show and make asking those questions and learning from them fun.
A time traveler's survival guide. The vertical green bars are the only times in Earth's history with enough oxygen to breathe (hypoxia) and low enough to avoid oxygen toxicity (hyperoxia):
That blue bar is extremely pessimistic. Humans can survive pretty well with 15% oxygen, and do so in several places in the Andes mountains, China and India. I wouldn't recommend doing it without lengthy acclimatizing, especially not considering my last paragraph, but it's completely survivable by itself.
Humans also don't really have a problem with 25% oxygen, although that will definitely bring down the life expectancy.
On the other hand, note how those pointers talk about giant insects, megafauna and other scary things. Those are a much bigger problem than the air you're breathing.
To add to this: At 3'500 meters above sea level, the pressure is down to 2/3 atmospheres. So instead of 21 kPa of oxygen partial pressure, it is only 14 kPa. So like breathing 14 % oxygen at sea level. People live at that height.
Dumb question, but in a very oxygen rich environment, can you just breathe through a paper bag or something? Mostly just breathe your own exhaled CO2 with a bit of O2 leaking in?
For short periods maybe. You only use a few percent of the O2 you breathe in each time. But you also increase the CO2 each time. It'd depend on the amount of leak because you need enough O2 coming in but enough CO2 going out.
I'm super skeptical of this.
You don't get oxygen toxicity, even breathing pure oxygen, unless you're under significantly more pressure than atmospheric pressure...
So either this graphic is wrong/misleading, or the atmosphere was more than double current pressure for most of earth's history... Which I'm pretty skeptical of.
My grandfather would tell stories of how the planet used to be covered in plants and you could breathe the air outside. Back when the sky was blue.
Where is this from ?
It is (I hope) an original. Though the form "my grandfather would tell stories" might be bordering on cliché.
I have a feeling that I read this before somewhere
Especially the "Back when the sky was blue" part
Sounds to me like Dad needs a little credit here.
Even if you arent good at improv "Thats a good question! I'm not sure, we should look that up!" Is an easy go-to.
Then after shower and get into bed we look up todays questions.
Get some perri-air
God damnit I missed that pun until now.
This is just your “one of today’s lucky 10,000” moment.
First off, weird to point out that they're "age appropriate"
If your kid reads above the age level and understands it that's generally a good thing
Number two I don't get why this is such a weird concept on how to explain things to a child. Seems pretty normal and "age appropriate"
Not only that, it'd be better to ask the kid why oxygen tanks are needed on spacecraft, then ask why we don't need them here on earth.
It's a weird post, in general.
That's awesome. I love weird questions with weird but accurate answers.
So, where do I find this dad, as opposed to, "Dunno, ask yer mom, and fetch me a ~~bud light~~ coors."?
Phytoplanktons be like, what'd he say fuck me for (^_-)
Aim her at Asimov and Clarke.
I'm very disappointed there was no praise for dad at the end of all that.
We don't do that.
My kid is twenty three years old. I raised her alone. Crazy, I know, but she and I are pretty close.
To this day, I get dozens of adulating text messages on mother's Day for "playing both roles."
On Father's Day, total utter crickets except from my daughter herself.
Fathers are here to donate sperm and fund other lives. That's it.
Oh look, it's buzz-Killington.
"Not on this planet... yet."
Or if you want to go full crash course, "For now, but that hasn't always been the case and might not be in another million years" and explain things like Oxygen Collapse/Great Oxygenation during the proterozoic when oxygen levels first shot up and killed off a ton of oxygen-hating things.
Not on this planet... Yet
You know that lil mf reading the expanse.
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