Can I lick it?

a year ago by The Picard Maneuver to c/science_memes

dohpaz42 85 points a year ago

I have to admit that I absolutely love how licking sodium or chloride individually is very bad for you, but when you put them together, you can lick, eat, and even swim in it all day with minimal ill health effects.

Science. 💙

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Skullgrid 64 points a year ago

Sodium reacts violently in water
Chlorine was used in mustard gas
Sodium chloride : I make the soup too salty (yuckyCat.jpg)

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deranger 1 point a year ago

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BootLoop 27 points a year ago

swim in it all day

If you submerged your body in table salt in a swimming pool for an entire day, would you come out dehydrated and start to turn cured like beef jerky?

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vivalapivo 11 points a year ago

(Homer Simpson) Mhh cured beef jerky

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chatokun 2 points a year ago

Don't we taste more like pork?

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vivalapivo 4 points a year ago

The only time I taste the human flesh is when I nervously bite my cheek so it starts to have fibroma which I try to gnaw off. Nah, tastes more like clam

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dohpaz42 6 points a year ago

If it’s anything like pool salt, probably not. I have a neighbor who uses pool salt, and I feel like I come out less shriveled (in my fingers of course 😏) than if it were chlorine water.

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Tja 7 points a year ago

You are taking about water with salt. The question about submerging in a pool full of just salt.

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theluckyone 4 points a year ago

I was in the pool!

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Geobloke -1 points a year ago

Ask RFK Jr

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floo 13 points a year ago

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Korhaka 4 points a year ago

If you eat salt all day its going to have some quite serious health effects. Traces of it are tasty but that is about the limit.

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ByteJunk 2 points a year ago

Drinking seawater will kill someone quite fast...

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Korhaka 3 points a year ago

Can't wait for bionic kidneys to be an option that allow drinking sea water

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pankuleczkapl 60 points a year ago

This diagram is way way way too conservative with the "see you on the other side" classification. To name a few: fluorine will literally make you catch fire instantly (if there's more of it, you will basically get burned to a crisp before you can even blink), caesium will violently react with water in your mouth and produce so much hydrogen and heat, the whole mixture will instantly explode (in fact, this will not only be a usual, fire-like explosion, it will in addition to that be a so-called Coulomb explosion, which makes the situation even worse)

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dubyakay 15 points a year ago

I wish to subscribe to more fun chemistry reaction facts!

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RandomStickman 54 points a year ago

It's never occurred to me that I can lick neon

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Tar_alcaran 27 points a year ago

Can you lick a gas? Licking liquid neon is very unwise.

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knatschus 17 points a year ago

Then lick solid neon, duh

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bathing_in_bismuth 14 points a year ago

You can lick xenon. Even inhale. Very fancy and very expensive. Show those nitrous plebs that you have the wealth to enjoy real chemical cuisine!

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Olgratin_Magmatoe 5 points a year ago

Just ask Rocky to make you some neononite. If they can make xenonite, I don't see why they couldn't do neonite.

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Maxxie 40 points a year ago

Licking most of the transuranium elements would entale sticking your tongue in a particle collider. Which I think is a fun Friday night 🤪

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wise_pancake 30 points a year ago

Collider? I barely know her!

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davidgro 9 points a year ago

...And then they built the super collider.

Thank you, you've been a great audience.

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teft 4 points a year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski

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Maxxie 9 points a year ago

You have activated my trap card!

You see, I was waiting for someone to bring up head-in-particle-collider-soviet-man only to raise you a different less known Vietnamese physicist who stuck his hands there instead!

there's an ok Kyle Hill video about it if you're interested (:

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jaybone 2 points a year ago

That’s what she said.

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PaulBunyan 40 points a year ago

Being colorblind sucks

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waterSticksToMyBalls 39 points a year ago

It just means you can lick them all

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Tja 1 point a year ago

Superpowers!

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not_IO 36 points a year ago

can you see these? 🤔

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echodot 4 points a year ago

I love that the colour blind compatible version to just incompetentible to everyone else.

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5PACEBAR 3 points a year ago

Oh wow! I'd give you Lemmy gold if I could 🥇

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jaybone 14 points a year ago

Exactly.

They could very easily just keep the color for color seeing people, and then add a simple pattern in the background.

Like maybe diagonal lines on one, wavy horizontal lines in another, small dots in another, etc.

Just pretend you are taking a black and white picture or making a black and white copy on an old copy machine. Can you still interpret the data afterwards? If yes, then you did it right.

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echodot 4 points a year ago

What you're supposed to do with this stuff is design it in grayscale first, conveying information through shading, and then just add colour afterwards while maintaining the shade.

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dubyakay 8 points a year ago

Don't let a stupid chart tell you what you can and can't lick.

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BeNotAfraid 22 points a year ago

Why isn't one of those responses

"Yes, you can!" ?

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samus12345 12 points a year ago

Because "Sure, go for it" is just that worded another way.

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porous_grey_matter 5 points a year ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-uV8TGjaGU

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BeNotAfraid 5 points a year ago

Listen to more music, bro.

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samus12345 5 points a year ago

Ah, a woosh. Thanks for the context!

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BeNotAfraid 2 points a year ago

I don't mean that in a shitty way either. Low End Theory by Tribe Called Quest, Black on Both Sides by Mos Def and Madvillainy by Madvillain. Spin them start to finish with a decent set of headphones. Good Shit.

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whome 21 points a year ago

I'm slightly infuriated that green doesn't say: yes, you can!

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Routhinator 3 points a year ago

Can we edit it?!

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Rev3rze 9 points a year ago

Sure, go for it.

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grumpusbumpus 15 points a year ago

Licking Lead is only "not a great idea?" I think it's squarely in the "Please don't do that" territory.

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Donkter 32 points a year ago

You can absolutely lick lead once without any noticeable consequences. You need to be living in constant interaction with lead to get poisoning.

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InternetCitizen2 8 points a year ago

The best part is that if you do it enough you will forget what the problem is and an continue to lick lead.

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petersr 3 points a year ago

Would you rather lick Uranium?

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ivanafterall 2 points a year ago

Damn, so close, put "us" in there and I'd be licking Uranus.

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don 14 points a year ago

Some of those in the actinoid [sic] series are gonna be really difficult to lick simply because of how unbelievably short their half-life is, or those such as mendelevium, that require you to either have access to (and in other cases even have your head inside of) a linear particle collider.

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ShinkanTrain 13 points a year ago

* Under standard conditions for temperature and pressure

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davidagain 3 points a year ago

Yeah, if it's possible to have a normal licking experience with something that's gaseous at room temperature, it's not going to go well if you do lick it.

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Tower 13 points a year ago

You know, I'm surprised by how much green is on here. I would have expected much more red and purple.

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finitebanjo 13 points a year ago

OH BOI, HERE I GO LICKING RADIOACTIVE CARBON ISOTOPES AGAIN!

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AyuTsukasa 12 points a year ago

The most useful chart 😅

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SpaceRanger13 11 points a year ago

For the tactile learners out there!

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teft 11 points a year ago

I want to meet the motherfucker bold enough to lick cesium.

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EndlessNightmare 2 points a year ago

I don't think you'd be licking much of anything after that. It's the one at 10 seconds in the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YNsIaSbFdg

They're so casual about it too.

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marcos 10 points a year ago

Go ahead and lick pure oxygen. Nothing wrong with that, sure.

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Siethron 16 points a year ago

You know O2 is pure oxygen right? Unless we're getting into the technicality of if things in there gaseous forms can be licked it's safe.

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shneancy 5 points a year ago

i think gasses can be licked, for example - if i put menthol shards into hot cup of water, i can definitely feel it on my tongue if i lick the air above the cup. therefore, lickable

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marcos 1 point a year ago

Get a bottle of pure oxygen and open it over a tongue-simulator¹ to see what happens.

People usually use a hot-dog. But with oxygen, even a piece of wood is close enough.

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Blemish5236 5 points a year ago

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BreadOven 4 points a year ago

You need something else along with the oxygen to cause combustion.

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Siethron 3 points a year ago

The mercury and Gemini space programs had cabins consisting of pure oxygen. And those astronauts were fine.

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Tlaloc_Temporal 2 points a year ago

Apollo 1 says hi.

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meme_historian 10 points a year ago

So what I get from this: You can probably just lick it. Odds are in your favor

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ivanafterall 6 points a year ago

When in doubt, lick it.

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ExploitedAmerican 4 points a year ago

I follow the same rule with my wife.

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Wolf 4 points a year ago

When a problem comes along, you must lick it

Before the cream sets out too long, you must lick it

When something's going wrong, you must lick it

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underscores 9 points a year ago

I'll take a pint of the purple stuff to go, please

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finitebanjo 9 points a year ago

Jokes on you, it'll decay before you reach the car.

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underscores 4 points a year ago

thanks, I'll take it all to stay then

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PrimeMinisterKeyes 8 points a year ago

Lick mercury? Plenty of people carry lumps of it right in their teeth, 24/7.

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vithigar 3 points a year ago

I responded similarly when I saw this posted before. Yes, mercury can be very toxic if it gets into your blood, but the chances of that happening from a lick are astonishingly small.

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EndlessNightmare 1 point a year ago

To my understanding, organic compounds are where the real danger is with mercury.

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BreadOven 2 points a year ago

Technically they're amalgams with silver or other metals. Different properties and such.

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neidu3 8 points a year ago

If chemistry was spearheaded by goats

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renzhexiangjiao 8 points a year ago

licking uranium is only "maybe not the best idea"?

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smeg 12 points a year ago

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deranger 1 point a year ago

Uranium is a toxic metal, even when completely disregarding its radioactivity

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smeg 3 points a year ago

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echodot 8 points a year ago

See, absolutely no order to the periodic table. Utterly useless.

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Hackworth 10 points a year ago

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napkin2020 8 points a year ago

Licks liquid Nitrogen

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Tja 1 point a year ago

Licking hydrogen is safe? Licks the sun

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BootLoop 7 points a year ago

Titanium should not be on a higher danger level than lead.

Edit: Tl != Ti

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dmention7 12 points a year ago

That's Thallium (Tl). Titanium (Ti) is a happy shade of green.

(I'm only replying because I thought that same thing at first glance)

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BootLoop 3 points a year ago

Ah thanks.

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EndlessNightmare 1 point a year ago

Titanium (Ti) is a happy shade of green.

And I would certainly hope so. You can buy eating utensils made from titanium.

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aeternum 7 points a year ago

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samus12345 7 points a year ago

And none of the answers say that you can't. Some of them just say that you shouldn't.

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nebulaone 7 points a year ago

PlumBum is my favorite flavor.

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koper 6 points a year ago

I think I would rather lick Technetium than Lithium

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UpAndAtThem 6 points a year ago

Yes you can! ...well I'm gone!

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sem 3 points a year ago

Missed opportunity for sure!

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Fermion 5 points a year ago

Radon should be yellow. You don't want long term exposure of it in your lungs, but it's still mostly chemically inert and not a significant immediate danger.

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wolframhydroxide 6 points a year ago

Just like how lithium should be red. Just because it's less likely to explode your face open doesn't mean that it's just "not a good idea". It immediately creates pure Lithium Hydroxide, which will immediately start saponifying your mouth, and that's assuming it doesn't immediately light on fire, like the last time I did that experiment.

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RizzRustbolt 5 points a year ago

Flourine should be the darkest purple. Injesting or inhaling any amount is serious bad news.

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moopet 4 points a year ago

Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life.

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NoneOfUrBusiness 4 points a year ago

Noble gases go from 0 to 100 real quick.