Once again I am putting “Attic” temporarily on hiatus, as we ponder the dualism between dream and reality, the eternal struggle for meaning and connection, and why demons so often come in funny colors. Our intrepid friends will be back soon.
Meanwhile, I had an actual non-trivial discussion today about where a tree trunk comes from. In particular, when a tree grows, where does all that huge mass of cellulose in its trunk come from?
We all know that tree trunks are huge, massive things — think of the Amazon rainforest. But the vast weight of cellulose in their trunks comes from the most unlikely of places.
It’s an interesting question partly because so many people get it totally wrong, giving answers like “it comes from the soil”, or “sucked up from the roots”. It’s pretty easy to show that those answers are incorrect, but it’s somewhat trickier to work out the right answer in detail.
This is such an intriguing question that I’m going to hold off giving an answer until tomorrow, to give readers time to think about it.
This is a very fun question, you hint at the answer in your post: It’s all about the cellulose 🙂 As a child, I was curious about this, because we had trees growing all around our house and I couldn’t understand why the ground around them didn’t sink as the trees got bigger…thanks to my dad, a Chemical Engineer, he helped me to understand.
FANS CLAMOR FOR THE RETURN OF THE ATTIC.
Sally, thanks for your enthusiasm. The Attic story will be better if it pauses every once in a while to recharge batteries.
FANS STILL CLAMOR FOR THE RETURN OF THE ATTIC,
EVEN IF ITS TAKING A BREAK,
EVEN IF IT “NEEDS RECHARGING”
FANS STILL CLAMOR.