PLEASE without being graphic, but where does everything go? Ashes are just the carbon that you contained? I don’t know what else makes us up, but must be released into the atmosphere or something no?
I’m a big fan of Neil Degrass Tyson’s videos, and learning about the universe is basically my substitute for religion. My sister died yesterday after a battle with cancer. And being the sciencey astro nerd of an uncle, I need a little better understanding of what makes us up, to explain what remains to get used again. To her 16 yo daughter who isn’t particularly religious either, but is obviously in a pretty sensitive state, as am I. Looking for comfort.
In: 6
I’ll take a crack at it.
65% of our mass is oxygen. 150 lb person is about 98 lbs oxygen. That can easily got back into the atmosphere.
Another 28 lbs is carbon and not all will end up up in the ash. A lot of it will end up as carbon dioxide.
Another 15 lbs is hydrogen. Most of that will end up as water vapor.
5 lbs is nitrogen. Most of of our atmosphere is nitrogen gas.
A little over 2 lbs is Calcium. I believe that is the bulk of the ashes.
What happens to the gasses that return to the atmosphere? Look at the trees. The bulk of the mass of every tree comes from carbon dioxide taken right out of the atmosphere. The carbon dioxide goes into trees. The oxygen keeps all the animals alive.
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