5 ms·

Isn’t this common sense?

dorkwood 8y ago
No.
crummy 8y ago
Common sense is, if I can see the sun through it unblocked, it must let light through, and light gives me vitamin D, right?
antris 8y ago
Who cares if it's common sense? Common sense is a very bad way to make conclusions.
Insanity 8y ago
I knew about this - and I think that if you have had a deficiency of Vitamin D your doctor might have told you about it. But I'd wager to say the majority of the population that didn't consult a doctor due to a deficiency won't know this. (Unless, perhaps, when they studied something in the medical field).
redcalx 8y ago
I've occasionally posed this question to people during casual conversation, and I've always received the same answer - 'of course!' (... you make vitamin D behind glass). It's still not clear to me if there are some types of glass that do allow vitamin D synthesis or not.
- jrs235 8y ago
  From my understanding, UVB is required for vitamin D synthesizing by your body. If the glass blocks UVB then you're out of luck.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
Common sense is a function of individual's level of knowledge. For vast majority of people, "common sense" would dictate answering this question "yes", even though in reality, the answer is "no".
Ensorceled 8y ago
How could the fact that glass blocks UVB but allows UVA and Light be common sense?
- turc1656 8y ago
  I think it's one of those things that should be common sense but we don't generally think about it hard enough. By that I mean everyone probably could figure it out if they just gave it about 30 seconds of thought. I clearly remember the day I learned this back in high school. My physics teacher was discussing the refraction of light in materials like water and glass and the conversation moved into how materials can break up the components of light (like a prism). Another student was trying to make sense of this concept of light breaking down into frequencies and its component parts but still be light after being broken down. Forcing us to think about it ourselves, the teacher asked the class two questions: 1) Have you ever gotten a tan anywhere on your body on a long car drive in the summer? Everyone thought for a moment and answered that they hadn't even gotten so much as a farmer's tan on their arm to which he asked... 2) Why? This forced us to think about it and realize that the window was doing more than just refraction and was stripping out or absorbing part of the light and even though it appeared as the same light to us, whatever was being removed must have been in the spectrum of light not visible to humans. So we all intuitively know this, but never stop to actually think about it.
  - hombre_fatal 8y ago
    Doesn't seem like much intuition was had in your example, to be honest. The teacher primed you with "Why have you never gotten burned on a long summer drive?" and then you bought that as fact and backsplained it with some basic prism experiments, the backsplanation not really mattering once you buy the fact from the teacher. In other words, I'm not sure what 30 second thought process you think the average person can walk through to replace a teacher telling you the fact outright. Once you know a fact, people can "intuit" any explanation. Just talk to children and listen to their bizarre theories -- but I would not call that intuition because they cannot arrive at the original fact that way. Besides, my intuition is the opposite. My friend was a truck driver and said he'd get sunburned hands. He always kept sunscreen in the cabin.

No.

Common sense is, if I can see the sun through it unblocked, it must let light through, and light gives me vitamin D, right?

antris 8y ago

Who cares if it's common sense? Common sense is a very bad way to make conclusions.

Insanity 8y ago

I knew about this - and I think that if you have had a deficiency of Vitamin D your doctor might have told you about it. But I'd wager to say the majority of the population that didn't consult a doctor due to a deficiency won't know this. (Unless, perhaps, when they studied something in the medical field).

redcalx 8y ago

I've occasionally posed this question to people during casual conversation, and I've always received the same answer - 'of course!' (... you make vitamin D behind glass). It's still not clear to me if there are some types of glass that do allow vitamin D synthesis or not.

jrs235 8y ago
From my understanding, UVB is required for vitamin D synthesizing by your body. If the glass blocks UVB then you're out of luck.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

Common sense is a function of individual's level of knowledge. For vast majority of people, "common sense" would dictate answering this question "yes", even though in reality, the answer is "no".

Ensorceled 8y ago

How could the fact that glass blocks UVB but allows UVA and Light be common sense?

turc1656 8y ago
I think it's one of those things that should be common sense but we don't generally think about it hard enough. By that I mean everyone probably could figure it out if they just gave it about 30 seconds of thought. I clearly remember the day I learned this back in high school. My physics teacher was discussing the refraction of light in materials like water and glass and the conversation moved into how materials can break up the components of light (like a prism). Another student was trying to make sense of this concept of light breaking down into frequencies and its component parts but still be light after being broken down. Forcing us to think about it ourselves, the teacher asked the class two questions: 1) Have you ever gotten a tan anywhere on your body on a long car drive in the summer? Everyone thought for a moment and answered that they hadn't even gotten so much as a farmer's tan on their arm to which he asked... 2) Why? This forced us to think about it and realize that the window was doing more than just refraction and was stripping out or absorbing part of the light and even though it appeared as the same light to us, whatever was being removed must have been in the spectrum of light not visible to humans. So we all intuitively know this, but never stop to actually think about it.
- hombre_fatal 8y ago
  Doesn't seem like much intuition was had in your example, to be honest. The teacher primed you with "Why have you never gotten burned on a long summer drive?" and then you bought that as fact and backsplained it with some basic prism experiments, the backsplanation not really mattering once you buy the fact from the teacher. In other words, I'm not sure what 30 second thought process you think the average person can walk through to replace a teacher telling you the fact outright. Once you know a fact, people can "intuit" any explanation. Just talk to children and listen to their bizarre theories -- but I would not call that intuition because they cannot arrive at the original fact that way. Besides, my intuition is the opposite. My friend was a truck driver and said he'd get sunburned hands. He always kept sunscreen in the cabin.