THE VIDEO SHELF · photosynthesis and mass
Where Do Trees Get Their Mass?
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.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN uses it as the go-to demonstration of how unintuitive mass conservation is, especially in weight loss and burning threads.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Veritasium
- Topic
- photosynthesis and mass
- Format
- explainer
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2015–2021
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
"Where do trees get their mass?" - [VIDEO] This was highly enlightening the first time I watched it :)
lathiat on Hacker News · 2021-04
In Where does a candle go when it burns?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 …
lkbm on Hacker News · 2015-04
In When You Lose Weight, Where Does It Go?An interesting corollary to this is "Where do trees get their mass?" Veritasium has a fun video demonstrating how unintuitive this is: [VIDEO]
JshWright on Hacker News · 2017-11
In When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.