{"id":148,"date":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/?p=148"},"modified":"2026-08-01T10:01:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T10:01:54","slug":"drinking-dinosaur-pee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/drinking-dinosaur-pee\/","title":{"rendered":"Drinking Dinosaur Pee"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>Since on a planetary scale everything is eventually recycled, did you drink dinosaur pee today?<\/h2>\n<div class=\"wp-caption alignnone\">\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Exploded stars spread matter to be recycled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>O.K, how about pee from fish in the reservoir?\u00a0 Just how <span>recycled<\/span> is the water we drink and the air we breathe?\u00a0 Is the 5,789th molecule to the left of your heart one that was part of Leonardo Da Vinci?\u00a0 Or someone else, you pick.\u00a0 How small a particle do you feel comfortable sharing with a multitude of people and creatures stretching back in time?<\/p>\n<p>You may recall that matter can neither be created nor destroyed only changed in form, and that the total mass and energy in a system is constant.\u00a0 Clearly then there is some \u201c<em>recycled<\/em>\u201d material going around!\u00a0 So you need to be O.K. with being composed of <em>recycled<\/em> material because it is just the way things are put together.<\/p>\n<p>Stars can be thought of as the furnaces that create various elements.\u00a0 That\u2019s where the Carbon we have in us has come from.\u00a0 So too do the other elements come from stars.<\/p>\n<h2>Is all this being recycled a good thing?<\/h2>\n<p>Back to the dinosaur pee question though.\u00a0 Are actual droplets of pee still floating around?\u00a0 This touches on a question of our perspective and our limitations in terms of our senses.\u00a0 A molecule of water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.\u00a0 One particular molecule in a droplet of water is incredibly small.\u00a0 There are natural processes that break apart such molecules as well as forming them.\u00a0 The <strong>recycled<\/strong> nature of matter means that what we see as solid is really only a temporary gathering of elements that will be broken apart and <strong>recycled<\/strong> into something else.\u00a0 In a sense we are even more unique than you might have thought!<\/p>\n<h3>Yes, you are partially composed of recycled dinosaur.<\/h3>\n<p>But we are <em>also<\/em> composed of <span>recycled<\/span> forests, <span>recycled<\/span> mountains, oceans, and the very stuff of stars!<\/p>\n<h3> Comment and Share!<\/h3>\n<h3>How do you feel about being composed of recycled materials?<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since on a planetary scale everything is eventually recycled, did you drink dinosaur pee today? Exploded stars spread matter to be recycled. O.K, how about pee from fish in the reservoir?\u00a0 Just how recycled is the water we drink and the air we breathe?\u00a0 Is the 5,789th molecule to the left of your heart one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,23],"tags":[498,499,223,500,501,502,503,504],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-empower-network","category-science","tag-dinosaur","tag-dinosaur-pee","tag-energy","tag-matter","tag-recycle","tag-recycled","tag-star","tag-stars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions\/279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/howtodoitnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}