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So like getting the same answer in math using a different method?

Like animals, plants are aerobic organisms, and must also consume the sugar they make via aerobic respiration (C6H12O6 + 6O2 -> 6CO2 + 6H2O). So from just making and "burning" food, the mass of water is conserved by plants, less any sugar they store for later use.

(Backing up a bit, in photosynthesis, the oxygen atoms that go into the sugar come from the CO2, while the oxygen from the water (that makes 89% of H2O's mass) is released as oxygen into the surrounding air.)

On average the mass of water in and outside of a plant that isn't growing is in dynamic equilibrium, except for the changes in water temporarily stored in or moving through the plant (e.g., in sap). But for a plant that is growing, including just storing food, its overall mass increases. Most of this mass is carbon and oxygen from CO2, but also some is hydrogen from "destroyed"/"lost" water. (The rest of the water molecule is released as oxygen into the surrounding air.)

The bulk of a plant is composed of carbon, oxygen, and a bit of hydrogen. Some of this is sugar (food) that is temporarily stored for later use. Most of this is cellulose and hemicellulose, which are polymers (long, chemically bound chains) of sugar molecules, which comprise the structure of the plant. (Cellulose has the chemical formula (C6H5O10)n, where n is some big number of the C6H5O10 units. Note that C6H5O10 is a simple sugar, minus 2 H's and an O, or H2O. The combination of simple sugars to make cellulose actually releases water, so that somewhat reduces the net water consumed by a growing plant. But I digress.)

Switching gears entirely, there are many other non-biological factors that affect the amount of water on or above Earth's surface through goelogic time. It's not at all a trivial matter of whether the amount of water is increasing or decreasing through time, or at over a given time peirod. Volcanoes release water from the interior. Chemical weathering of rocks puts some of the water into the chemical structure of minerals. Subduction returns some of the water and "water"-containing minerals to the interior. Some water vapor is broken down into H and OH by ultraviolet sunlight, and some of those (especially the H) escape into space. (Comets and asteroids also deliver a bit of water and hydrated minerals, but beyond the very early Earth, this is negligible.)

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> For example, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 is thought to have triggered the eruption of nearby Mount Unzen in Japan.

Do you have a source for this? They're on separate magmatic arcs.

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When we eat plants we are eating lots of water. Consider a fresh apricot compared with a dried apricot.

The dried apricot is chewy and wrinkled because much of the water has been removed during the dehydration process. That water was turned to water vapour and went into the air.

If you eat a lot of watermelon you may need to pee more. Because there was a lot of water in it.

I forgot to water a plant of mine. The leaves went crispy and the whole pant shriveled up. Not only did it not get any new water to the point that it died… some of the water which was in the leaves and body of the plant was lost and is no longer in the plant anymore.

Dried herbs are dryer than fresh herbs. Because some of the water that was in the plant is no longer in the plant. It went somewhere else (likely into the air as water vapour).

Of course some of the water was used to build the plant itself as it didn’t come from nowhere.

The plant uses water and carbon dioxide to build sugars.

When you breathe in your breathe in oxygen (plus other gassed) When you breathe out you breathe out carbon dioxide (plus other gasses).

Where does the carbon come from? From the plants you eat.

The sugars in the plant are turned back into water and carbon dioxide.

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On a slightly smaller scale we've sismic imagery (think like a sonogram) of a lot of the near surface plumbing on the big island so that cover Kilauea, Manua Loa, and a few other features. If you read about the 2018 eruption of Kilauea you'll see that in action as it's all about a loss of pressure in the system.

I'd also add that the hotspot didn't just make the modern Hawaiian Islands. There's a whole chain of eroded sea mounts that used to be other islands! And the direction they go in is in the direction the Pacific plates is moving. And this is a trait we see in other hot spit volcanos. Since the souce of the heat is from the mantle it doesn't move, but the plates still move over it.

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Could you be remembering convergent evolution and analogous structures? It’s when two unrelated animals have similar ecological niches, so they end up adapting to it in similar ways. Like sharks and dolphins both having similar shapes and dorsal fins to swim in water, or echidnas and hedgehogs both having prickly spines.

Uhh, being hit with an alpha particle randomly somewhere where something radioactive is exposed to air? I think Patrick Blackett proved that's what happens when that happens, back in 1925 or so.

It absolutely is an incredibly insignificant amount, but I didn't want to say "the number of oxygens on Earth is perfectly fixed and they're just cycled through being part of different particles", because even the number of oxygen atoms on Earth goes up or down. Probably more down as we send it into space? I don't know.

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Ah, that makes sense. Thanks so much for clearing that up! I’m completely ignorant, so I had no idea what the process was like.

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EDIT: did not realize you were only correcting the misconception the first part.

This is not the time the clocks show. This is about the age of the things in the ISS compared to earth

Excuse me, exactly which nuclear reaction do you think is taking place to convert nitrogen into oxygen?