Why Trees Are Out to Get You

YouTube's largest collaboration featuring MrBeast, Mark Rober, Destin from Smarter Every Day, and many others aiming to plant 20 million trees before the end of the year.

Each tree costs $1, making the total fundraising target 20 million dollars.

Viewers can donate at teamtrees.org to help reach the target.

Creator is reposting a previously published video about trees bending the laws of physics due to travel constraints in Sydney.

Trees transport water from roots to branches over heights exceeding 100 meters, which seems impossible given physical limits.

• Water can only be sucked up a tube to a maximum of 10 meters • Beyond this height, a perfect vacuum forms and water boils spontaneously • A 100-meter tree would need to create a pressure difference of 10 atmospheres

• Transpiration: water evaporates from leaves, pulling water molecules upward • Tree vessels contain gaps, not continuous tubes • Osmotic pressure pushes water upward from roots

• Osmotic pressure fails in mangrove trees where salt water reverses the effect • Capillary action in 20-200 micrometer tubes would only raise water less than one meter • Dead xylem cells cannot actively pump water

In liquids, pressure can go below zero, creating negative pressure and tension as water molecules pull on each other.

• Water evaporates from nanoscale pores in cell walls, creating negative pressures of minus 15 atmospheres • One atmosphere of pressure pushes in on one side while negative 15 atmospheres suction on the other • Water surface tension in tiny 2-5 nanometer pores prevents the meniscus from breaking

Pressure increases from minus 15 atmospheres at the top leaves to atmospheric pressure at the roots, creating the large pressure difference needed to transport water.

• Water should boil at negative 15 atmospheres but remains liquid because no air bubbles provide nucleation sites • Xylem tubes contain no air because they've been water-filled from the start • Water enters a 'super sucked' metastable state, similar to supercooled water

Contrary to expectations, less than 1% of transported water is used in photosynthetic reactions.

Only 5% of water is used to make new cells and build tree structure.

95% of the water simply evaporates through the leaves during transpiration.

For each molecule of carbon dioxide a tree takes in, it loses hundreds of molecules of water.

In the early 1600s, Johann Baptiste van Helmholtz measured soil mass before and after a 5-year tree growth experiment.

• Tree grew to 72 kilograms • Soil mass decreased by only 60 grams • Most of the tree's mass did not come from the soil

Van Helmholtz concluded the tree was made entirely of water, which was incorrect but demonstrated trees don't gain mass from soil.

The actual sources are water, soil nutrients, and the seed itself—but the largest mass source remained unidentified.

While sunlight provides energy for trees to build matter, the sun's energy itself is not matter.

95% of a tree's mass comes from carbon dioxide taken from the air, not from soil.

• Humans breathe out carbon dioxide and water to lose mass • Trees breathe in the same substances to gain mass • Both processes use identical materials

In a closed system with only a person and a tree, the human would shrink while the tree grows as they exchange carbon dioxide and water.