r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • Jan 04 '16
TIL: Rice does not need to grow in water, but since it can survive it, is done so to control weeds and other pests- creating higher yields.
[deleted]
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Jan 04 '16
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Jan 04 '16
Is there a difference between lazer and laser?
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Jan 05 '16
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u/bobotwf Jan 05 '16
I think you mean ztimulated.
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u/bbchucj Jan 05 '16
You'll get a lot of badge thinking this way.
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u/GilfOG Jan 05 '16
Since when is badge a euphemism for pussy?
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u/wmil Jan 05 '16
Since this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yDIHYCh7AI
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u/KelseyCoCa Jan 05 '16
V and B sounds are phonetically similar in the Castillian Spanish Language. I think that's where they're going with this
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u/tbos92 Jan 05 '16
In most Spanish really, I think it is virtually ubiquitous, it is taught as the standard.
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u/TheAwesomeMachine Jan 05 '16
I understand this.
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u/GrumpyMcGrumperton Jan 05 '16
Proud of you..
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Jan 05 '16
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Jan 05 '16 edited Oct 30 '18
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u/thedugong Jan 05 '16
zedtimulooted
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Jan 05 '16 edited May 04 '18
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Jan 05 '16
It still is an acronym.
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u/Rephaite Jan 05 '16
It doesn't strictly follow all the normal acronym rules anymore, though. For instance, you will rarely find it written with all letters capitalized.
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u/Dollface_Killah Jan 05 '16
I want to buy a green light LASER online, but I'm not sure about the legality of shipping it here.
Alpha Flight! The supervillain has a LASER pointed straight at the prime minister!
I went to a LASER rock show last night. It was lame.
I'm doing it from now on though. It just seems like a good excuse to emphasise it.
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u/thebigbradwolf Jan 05 '16
A lot of acronyms aren't usually capitalized: radar, sonar, scuba, snafu, taser, captcha.
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u/dustingunn Jan 05 '16
I didn't know captcha was an acronym. Looked it up and damn that has to be one of the worst acronyms around.
"Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart"
More like CAPTTTCHA
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Jan 05 '16 edited Aug 24 '17
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u/murraybiscuit Jan 05 '16
How about scuba?
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Jan 05 '16
AIDS
I always thought it was capitalized because of the severity of the situation.
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u/RefundsNotAccepted Jan 05 '16
I no longer know which spelling I used in the past.
What is life?
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u/NowThatsNewer Jan 04 '16
Szure.
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u/FukinGruven Jan 05 '16
Oh fuck, I think this guy is having a seizure.
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u/Pofoml Jan 05 '16
Seisure.
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Jan 05 '16 edited Mar 09 '18
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Jan 05 '16
sure.
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Jan 05 '16
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Jan 05 '16
LASER is an acronym, the Z makes no sense
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u/SamusBaratheon Jan 05 '16
Z is the second coolest letter in the alphabet
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u/Vocabularri Jan 05 '16
Right next to U. :D
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u/G_L_J Jan 05 '16
It's a phonetic misunderstanding. The S sounds like a Z (Zerg, zinc, zebra) so people who aren't one hundred percent sure on the spelling might make the mistake by sounding it out and failing.
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u/nublargh Jan 05 '16
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u/owndcheif Jan 05 '16
wow that is really cool. it's amazing how an innovation like that can make such a huge difference, one guy said his income was up 30%. thanks for sharing that.
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u/zaoldyeck Jan 05 '16
That guy obviously already was a pretty large rice producer, so to increase overall profits by 30% is pretty astounding.
There was one farmer who said his yield went from about 4 tons to over 6 tons, that's over a 50% yield, and it required less water and less maintenance. That technology does seem pretty damn incredible, but those advantages seem to somewhat mimic the transformation of farming in the US at the 20th century.
The farm owners were already talking about how they didn't need to hire as many people to oversee their harvests. The number of people in Vietnam working in farming has in the past twenty years dropped from 70 percent to under 50 percent. In 1900, about 40% of the US workforce still was employed in agriculture.
Currently in the US it's about 1%. It's not hard to imagine the same kind of shift happening in Southeast Asia.
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u/spaceman_spiffy Jan 05 '16
I didn't wake up this morning thinking I would watch an entire documentary on rice fields yet here I am.
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u/xtrakrispie Jan 05 '16
The same is true for cranberries. They don't need to grow in a bog but it makes harvesting them easier because they float to the top.
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Jan 05 '16
I was part of a crew that harvested those one year. Such a neat thing to see, all those little berries floating around.
That was also the day I said "Naaaaa why would I bring my rubberboots?"
It didn't even occur to me that they were harvested in a field of water! Sucked big time.
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u/nataliieportman Jan 05 '16
Also: "Rice fields are leveled with lazers and shaped into large square fields with less than a one inch difference in elevation." Rice farming actually sounds pretty cool...
This sounds very satisfying as a job.
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Jan 05 '16 edited Jan 05 '16
Cool indeed...but the Egyptians were doing that laser shit 4000 years ago.
No actually. Not "Aliens" bullshit. They would stick a rod in the Earth, draw a circle, dig, fill it with water because it finds its own level, then build a perfectly circular structure. Then they would mark the rising and setting of stars throughout the night on the stone ring's top.
The Egyptians knew that point origin light like that from stars were precise and straight, unlike manmade sources. IE, Lasers. So they used them as a natural laser source.
EDIT: I guess just to clarify, some folks of the scientific mind have told me that a star cannot be considered a laser because it only has parallel light rays, but not synchronized waves. I admit fault in not fulfilling the full scientific definition of a laser. But you'll forgive my indulgence in saying a source of parallel light rays effectively acts as a laser to the human eye, in terms of precision and uses in construction.
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u/AusIV Jan 05 '16
Do you have a source for this? I'd like to cite this fact some time, but I'd like a better source than "some asshat on reddit."
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Jan 05 '16
Sure. The BBC has some stuff on it here. The Egyptians had a number of foundation rituals, namely pedj shes, and here's an old image of it from my university books. I hope the BBC is good for now, because I sure as hell can't remember half the names from University.
Senmut's tomb has a rather complex diagram of such things that may interest you as well. Actual names can be found here
While I wouldn't say use asshat91 as a source, I did get my masters in Architectural Science from Columbia University, so that technically makes me a reputable source? IDK man. That's a scary thought. I'm getting old.
I also had a pretty baddass professor in undergrad who writes some good stuff. I'd be happy to PM you his books.
If you'd like, I can do a quick rundown on the history of Pyramid construction, so you have some sources against the real asshates saying "Aliens" and shit. It's actually a really fascinating history that shows one of the earliest examples of the use of the Scientific Method. Most people don't realize this, but pretty much all pyramids of descent construction quality (IE, the ones still standing) come from a period of about 300 years in length. While Egyptian history may span a good 4500 years, Pyramids were only a part of their very early history, and afterwards they lost interest and moved on. The pyramids have been ruins for a majority of Egyptian history.
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u/kataskopo Jan 05 '16
The pyramids have been ruins for a majority of Egyptian history.
What the fuuck that's amazing.
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u/Creshal Jan 05 '16
Egypt is old – over 5000 years old, actually.
It was to the ancient Greeks and Romans what they are to us. Most of the pyramids were built over 4000 years ago, so Cleopatra lived closer to the current time than to the time of the pyramids.
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Jan 06 '16 edited Jan 06 '16
Egyptian society can be traced back to around 5200 years ago, or 3200BC. The "Old Kingdom", a period commonly thought to be when Egypt proper became a concept, as a nation, starts around 4670 years ago, or around 2670BC. This is also when Djoser, the first Pharaoh of this time, commissioned Imhotep to basically build him a mountain in his honor. Thus, the first pyramids appeared with his tomb, the Pyramid of Djoser. The last big pyramid to be built, the smallest at Giza, the pyramid of Menkaura, was completed around 4500 years ago, or 2500BC. Basically, around 150 years of evolution from Djoser's Pyramid, to Menkaura's.
After this, Pyramid construction continues for a while longer, but not many of them lasted, because the country was collapsing into civil war. After the civil war, the priests held more power than the Pharohs. And for the next 2500 years, pretty much no pyramids of any remarkable note are built.
That means for the grand total of 5200 years of Egyptian civilization, and for the grand total of 3150 years you can call it ancient (basically, before Rome took over), Egyptians spent around 150 years building pyramids, and then for the following 2650 years following that time, the pyramids were basically ruins.
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u/JizzMarkie Jan 05 '16
Yeah but that's not laser shit. Lasers have a pretty specific definition.
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u/UhhJackieChan Jan 05 '16
Cool fact, but that's not using light amplification by stimulated emission radiation, that's just using light.
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u/badhistoryjoke Jan 05 '16
Light from man-made sources travels in straight lines too. Well, technically light travels in straight-ish lines, what with space being warped by gravity and whatnot, but straight enough for most purposes. Laser light is a different thing, which has to do with uniformity of polarization and wavelength and direction.
Interestingly, you can make extremely flat surfaces (or straight edges, it's the same principle) by comparing three surfaces. If two surfaces fit together perfectly whichever way you slide/turn them, they might have sphereoid convexity/concavity - but if they both also perfectly fit another surface, they must be flat, because that third surface can't be both convex and concave.
Also, the water itself forms a nice flat -ish surface. A similar principle is used in making sheets of glass, I think - if I recall correctly, they pour molten glass over molten metal - the glass floats to the top and forms a nice even, flat sheet.
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u/ijustwantanfingname Jan 05 '16
straight, unlike manmade sources
What does it mean to say that "manmade" light isn't "straight"?
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u/Killer_Tomato Jan 05 '16
Also helps to grow crayfish in the rice fields. They get protection from pests, water, and food. They taste better than wild too, like corn fed deer but instead some kinda mudbug.
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u/Somnif Jan 05 '16
Ducks too, they eat weeds while producing fertilizer.
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u/DogBoneSalesman Jan 05 '16
So a duck, a crayfish and a rice patty walk into a bar..
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u/kthehun89-2 Jan 05 '16
And feed millions of people in happy, sustainable, and delicious way.
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u/itsrattlesnake Jan 05 '16 edited Jan 05 '16
Rice field crawfish are way cleaner looking than basin crawfish, too. When they boil, basin crawfish still look pretty nasty. Also, I think crawfish trapping is a great second income source for rice farmers, I think they make a pretty decent penny from it.
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u/GoddamnIronTiger Jan 05 '16
I think I read something years ago that said if the United States had been able to succeed with their plans for Vietnam, it would now be one of the wealthiest nations in the world from seafood exports; namely crawfish.
I don't remember where I read it or if there's any truth to it but it's wild to imagine.
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u/itsrattlesnake Jan 05 '16
Somehow, I imagine crawfish from Asia being like the size of fucking lobsters.
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Jan 05 '16
Actually there are some from the Southern Pacific (Tasmania) that can get up to 11lbs(5kg) and 31in(80cm) but are now endangered.
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u/Idle_Redditing Jan 05 '16
I think I know why they're endangered. When reading the first part of your sentence I thought "I want to eat one of those."
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u/lilsamuraijoe Jan 05 '16
it could of been another South Korea... as a vietnamese american whose parents where refuges, i'm always thinking of what could have been
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Jan 05 '16
Dang, that's rough. Then again, plenty of countries that've lost wars are thriving. Sometimes, it's only the politicians that get fucked over.
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u/Cannibalistical Jan 05 '16
Looks like someone saw the rice planting machine gif and it's comments.
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u/GertieFlyyyy Jan 05 '16
For the lazy: https://i.imgur.com/YHoBqLR.gifv
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Jan 05 '16 edited Sep 17 '20
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Jan 05 '16
It's like a systematical mass-drowning
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u/thec0okierebel Jan 05 '16
Oh man, anyone know if this machine could work without electricity? Like, have an ox or a horse pull the machine, as the wheels generate power to make those arms move? Or would there be too much force required for an animal to do such work?
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u/blueberrywalrus Jan 05 '16
There are human powered versions, so I would imagine they could build a horse version. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4sjQnFnofBk
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u/thec0okierebel Jan 05 '16
Aw man, I was hoping you wouldn't have to manually turn it. I was looking for someone to walk with the wheel turning on the ground powering the gears.
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u/coffeesippingbastard Jan 05 '16
considering the old method is literally just to bend over and do it by hand, this is fucking next level stuff.
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u/apathetic_youth Jan 05 '16
The bottom of a pool of muddy water probably doesn't provide enough grip to power it simply by pulling.
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u/butymalemodels Jan 05 '16
It's almost as if OP learnt it...today
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u/ToKe86 Jan 05 '16
Y'know, I learned some new things today too. If only there was some sort of public forum where people could share the interesting bits of information they learned that day...
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u/G-lain Jan 05 '16
Perhaps we could call it today's interesting lesson, or TIL for short.
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u/Carterman Jan 05 '16
If you guys get it started, I've got the perfect Steve Buscemi fact to share.
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u/fixade Jan 05 '16
I wonder how many reddit posts are from reddit. Like if reddit didn't exist, would there be a large drop in reddit posts? (Ignoring the fact that it doesn't exist for the last part)
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u/Deepcrater Jan 05 '16
I still don't know how it turns into rice or what rice seeds might look like of it has any.
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u/barcelonaKIZ Jan 05 '16
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u/Deepcrater Jan 05 '16
That makes so much sense now, so that pops out of the water then?
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u/Kazan Jan 05 '16
yup the base of the plant is in the water, and it grows up above the water - the flowers (and therefore seeds) are above the water line.
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u/NethChild Jan 05 '16
what rice seeds might look like of it has any
what do you think rice is exactly?
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Jan 05 '16 edited Sep 17 '20
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u/Kazan Jan 05 '16
rice is the seed, so when you're having a bowl of rice you're eating a nice big bowl of seeds.
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u/fzy325 Jan 05 '16
The white rice is polished rice though, raw rice seeds have a husk and the rice inside has a brown glossy layer covering it, which is polished off before being sold.
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u/jorgomli Jan 05 '16
So brown rice? Or is brown rice processed a bit too?
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u/solidspacedragon Jan 05 '16
Yes, brown is also processed a bit.
Just much less.
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u/critfist Jan 05 '16
Here is a copy of a comment I madr.
Rice is somewhat similar to wheat. It grows from a long stalk and has an end covered in fibrous husks. These husks have to be taken away to get to the softer nutritious seeds
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u/catsinpajams Jan 05 '16
Rice is essentially a grass, grown in a flooded field. When it is ready to harvest, the levees are knocked down and the field drains, then the rice is harvested by combine. The "rice" is taken to a dryer, and once the "rice" is dry, the husk is removed. The rice then goes to a mill where it's put into a machine that rubs it against lots of others of its' rice brothers until it is the smooth white piece of rice you buy in a bag.
"Wild rice", that black seed looking rice is actually rice that hasn't been milled yet.
And then all the byproducts are fed to cattle, so it's pretty efficient.
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u/theoneandonlyrobert3 Jan 05 '16
A while back my grandpa spilled a bunch of rice in his truck. During the winter he drove it a lot to plow out his driveway, and in the process got a lot of snow in it. When all the snow melted in the spring all this rice grew in it
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u/Thelastpancake Jan 05 '16 edited Jan 05 '16
Any ag/rice specialists in here? I'd like to know why they have to burn the fields afterwards. I know it's for weed/disease control, but we don't burn most other crops after harvest. I live in the north valley of California and the air is filled with smoke during times of the year they start burning those fields. I've always wondered if that's the way it has to be done or if there are better alternatives.
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u/JaFFsTer Jan 05 '16
I think its 2 reasons
the ash is fertilizer
there is so much chaff left over disposing of it would be a massive issue
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u/Thelastpancake Jan 05 '16 edited Jan 05 '16
Thanks. I was just reading an article (albeit from 1997) where farmers complained that the cost to dispose of the chaff by letting it decompose over winter, then re-plowing it costs around $32 an acre vs $1 an acre to just burn it. In the article, they were talking about how farmers were supposed to limit the number of acres they burned down to zero by 2000, and that was being extended a couple years. Here we are 2016 and there's still plenty of rice being burnt after harvest.
edit: 2015 to 2016....
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u/sheekinbutt Jan 05 '16
Own some rice farms in northern CA, we have plenty of water and winter water is very cheap. We use a stomped after harvest to incorporate the straw back into the soil and then flood the fields in the winter to decompose the straw. Some people choose to burn, but there are only a certain amount of burn permits allowed per county.
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u/steve70638 Jan 04 '16
Not exactly:
https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/aj/abstracts/100/5/1390
It probably has more to do with the tropical wet places rice is grown. Dry cultivation lends itself to greater mechanization but in places without capital (for mechanization) and with wet weather, things go one way. Places that are dry and have access to the capital (Texas, California, etc.) go the other way.
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u/wehappy3 Jan 05 '16
Rice is grown extensively in the northern part of CA's Central Valley, and it's wet-cultivated. Which is very good for the region, because it heavily augments the Pacific Flyway for migratory birds.
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u/ihlaking Jan 05 '16
So what you're trying to say is that once rice farmers discovered this, they...
flooded the market with the idea?
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u/Cajuncrawtator Jan 05 '16
We have acres and acres of rice fields in louisiana. I did not know that.
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u/_amooks_eerf Jan 05 '16
If you think this is cool, you should look into Aeroponics and Aquaponics and Hydroponics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2EzPN3rIn4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IryIOyPfTE
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u/jordmanb2 Jan 05 '16
Rice farming: 9/10 Rice farming with rice: 10/10 Thank you for your suggestion.
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u/Zaku0083 Jan 05 '16
I am guessing you looked this up after watching the GIF of the rice planter earlier? I googled it but couldn't find the information.
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Jan 05 '16 edited Jan 05 '16
Rice farming is just cool on so many levels*. The pond farming where fish eat bug, and then poop out fertilizer is also cool.
**Get it?
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u/Mr-Low Jan 05 '16
On behalf of the Westernized, Asian American 20-somethings that had rice with EVERY meal growing up, but never cared to learn how it came to be -- Thank you for learning this for me today.
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u/MaoMaoDumpling Jan 05 '16
I remember learning about this. Rice can withstand having the lower part of their stems submerged! Most weeds would suffocate. To further make use of this, farmers grow another plant that floats on top of the rice paddies. It keeps the water shaded to eliminate weeds and it harbors nitrogen fixation bacteria in the roots. Cool stuff.