this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 87 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That doesn't work anyway, since based on wheat variety, growing season, and grinding method, different flours have different information density.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 40 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They have an international prototype sack of flour in an old missile silo in Kansas. Ultimately that's what all the measurements are relative to

[–] CloutAtlas@hexbear.net 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

And the "Room Temperature" room, which is located in Greendale.

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[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I like to read bedtime stories to my wheat, so it learns more and has higher information density

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 3 points 2 months ago

I just plug mine into USB ports

[–] Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like the culinary world would benefit from having a measurement system that accounts for these factors.

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[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 56 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Wouldn't this make the units temperature-dependent?

Landauer limit is one kTln2 per bit of information, so at 300K about 3 zeptojoule per bit.
Dividing by c² we get 32 micro-quectogram per bit, so 32 yoctogram per terabit. 256 yoctogram per terabyte.
The Author wants half a septillion terabytes, 0.5•10²⁴ terabytes, half a yotta-terabyte.
That makes 128 grams.

Since I don't know what on earth "a cup of flour" is, I can't judge if the comic character proposes a reasonable conversion, but 0.1kg seems like a reasonable amount to use in cooking.

For baking I would rather have my units temperature dependent than density dependent (I can compact my flour or work with water or nuts, all having different densities, but my room temperature will always be roughly 300).
I endorse einstein-landauer units.

[–] zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 months ago (9 children)

184 grams is a touch high for "a cup of flour", but I'm not gonna check your math, and the comic probably wanted to use "close enough" round-ish numbers. The weight of a cup of flour is usually somewhere between 120g and 145g, going by the conversions used by major baking recipe publishers like King Arthur, Cooks Illustrated, Washington Post, New York Times, etc.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 2 months ago

I fear their apartment is at -50°C and this is a cry for help.

At least I am relieved to know that even acclaimed authors native to the cup-measurement system don't know what "a cup of flour is".

I'll be off baking my pannenkoek with 150g of flour then.

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 2 months ago

I figured it out. Typed the ln2 into my text and then forgot it in the calculator.
Great, I'ma redo alll my numbers then rq

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[–] Mastershelf@lemmy.one 35 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The real problem is measuring flour by volume instead of mass.

[–] Lucien@mander.xyz 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Solve both by measuring with moles

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

are other burrowing animals also ok?

[–] Lucien@mander.xyz 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If you don't have a mole at home, you can substitute with a gopher.

[–] I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 6 points 2 months ago

You can fit two moles in a liter, but a gopher is too big

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

What about lemmings :-)

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Except that moles would only work for counting granules of ground flour, as there is no "flour" molecule. Also, you'd need to have a very accurate measurement of the average mass of a single granule (or you'd need a packing efficiency coefficient and an average granule radius, otherwise you'd have to literally count them. Also, a mole of flour granules would be INSANELY large. 6.02*10^23 of anything larger than a macromolecule is no joke. At this point, since you'd have to weigh it or measure its volume anyway (unless you feel like counting microscopic flour particles for the next few trillion years), you might as well just use grams.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's a better way: German flour types. They're specifying mineral content, e.g. standard "white flour" is Type 405, meaning that when you pyrolyse 100g of flour, 405mg of ashes will be left. As the minerals were all in carbon solution before, and temperatures are low enough to not melt them into slag, you're essentially left with single atoms. Close enough at least for an assumption. If you disagree I shall hand you a mortar.

Of course, that doesn't specify everything. I suggest also measuring the released energy, then jot both numbers down on the complex plane. So you have joule-moles of flour.

[–] wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

We have now reached the peak: figure out how much flour you have by burning it to ash, then carefully measure the mass of that to figure out the amount of flour you need.

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[–] imgcat@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Made even worse by mixing cups, spoons, pints, gallons and their crazy ratios

[–] HawlSera@lemm.ee 29 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Information is physical? I'm gonna need a source on that one.

[–] cholesterol@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The idea is that information must have a physical representation. But I don't know how that would lead to a standardized mass of a byte.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 22 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (6 children)

No, you missed the point. See @milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee's comment and link to Landauer's Principle, the namesake of which is literally named in the title of the post.

TL;DR: Storing information requires a change in entropy. A change in entropy requires a change in energy. There must be a minimum non-zero amount of energy required for a given quantity of information. Energy is mass due to mass-energy equivalence. ∴ information has mass independent of its physical representation.

[–] lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 months ago

When referencing another person's comment, it can be helpful to link to that comment or the article you mentioned.

I'd also like to point out that many Wikipedia articles, particularly those written by experts on a given scientific subject, tend to be daunting rather than helpful for people not yet familiar with that subject.

Explanations like the one you offered in this comment and the next reply can help make topics more approachable, so I very much appreciate that.

To illustrate my point:

In this case, the article first describes the principle as "pertaining to a lower theoretical limit of energy consumption of computation", which doesn't directly highlight the connection to information storage. The next sentence then mentions "irreversible change in information" and "merging two computational paths", both of which are non-trivial.

From a brief glance at the article on reversible computing linked further on, I gather that "irreversible" here doesn't mean "you can't flip the bit again" but rather something like "you can't deterministically figure out the previous calculation from its result", so the phrase boils down to "storing a piece of information" for our context. The example of "merging computational paths" probably has no particular bearing on the energy value of information either and can be ignored as well.

Figuring out the resulting logic that you so kindly laid out – again, thank you for that! – requires a degree of subject-specific understanding to know what parts of the explanation can be safely ignored.

Of course, experts want to be accurate and tend to think in terms they're familiar with, so I don't fault them for that. The unfortunate result is that their writings are often rather intransparent to laypeople and linking to Wikipedia articles isn't always the best way to convey an understanding.

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[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Entropy in information theory is equivalent to entropy in quantum dynamics / thermodynamics

[–] noride@lemm.ee 7 points 2 months ago
[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 11 points 2 months ago
[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

i will Physically bitchslap you then you can deduce yourself the information about whether your face hurts or not, ayy lmao.

At least that's how I choose to interpret this new information

[–] LanguageIsCool@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I’d give a source but it’s physically in my house and it’s heavy

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[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 22 points 2 months ago

Oh sure, throw a fit — just wait until you want to convert those units to kilojoules!

Who's laughing now, tablespoons?!

[–] WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 17 points 2 months ago

Hundred sextillion terabytes. Yeah, everybody of calling it hungry sex bites in minutes.

[–] Sedathems@mander.xyz 13 points 2 months ago

I have absolutely no understanding of whatever is said here

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Metric appears to end at 10^30, but even then, I think the better way to phrase that number would be 5,000 quetta-bytes

Tera = 10^12; ~~Septillion~~ Sextillion = 10^21
Source

[–] Redjard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

*500 000 quettabytes
*Sextillion = 10^21 ( = Zetta)

I'd recommend wikipedia here, your source seems to have taken 3 years to update their table and their image is still outdated.

They likely didn't use quetta because it was only added 3 years ago, and is still not widely known. Or maybe it sounded better.

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