What would happen if you grabbed a leaf on the holodeck and tried to eat it?

[JirinPanthosa]

Most of the simple matter on the holodeck is replicated.

I'm more interested about this line of thought about projecting yourself as a hologram. Do they have custom skins? Could your wife see you as a Vulcan version of yourself, and you see your wife as a Klingon version of herself?

 

[F. King Daniel]

There's another implication of the holo-communication. If you can broadcast your image, why can't you broadcast a hologram? And, does that hologram have to look exactly like you, or can it be a hologram that looks like something different but is fully controlled by you? Do 90 year old couples do this with their spouses controlling images of idealized versions of their 30 year old selves?

Second Life in hologram form (see also: The movie Gamer)

Or the movie Surrogates.

 

[Mojochi]

There's another implication of the holo-communication. If you can broadcast your image, why can't you broadcast a hologram? And, does that hologram have to look exactly like you, or can it be a hologram that looks like something different but is fully controlled by you? Do 90 year old couples do this with their spouses controlling images of idealized versions of their 30 year old selves?

Yup. Just had a creepy thought. Geordi, being away on assignment, may very well still be married to Leah Brahms, & now engages in routine intimacy with her over subspace transmissions patched through the holodeck, so they experience really being together, but in essence, Geordi is still stuck recreating Leah on the holodeck.

 

[1001001]

Why would I be eating a leaf?

What am I, a Koala?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Why would I be eating a leaf?

What am I, a Koala?

Survival in the wilderness training?

 

[1001001]

What if you had a marijuana plant in the holodeck... If you roll it and smoke it, do you get stoned?

 

[Timo]

Q: What would the holodeck do if..?
A: Whatever pleases the user most. It is a machine devised explicitly and exclusively for pleasing, after all. It only has limitations if limitations are what makes the user happy.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Makarov]

If you try to eat a leaf on the holodeck the computer calculates that you're about to eat and replaces the leaf with a real hamburger, large fries, & chocolate milkshake

 

[Tenacity]

Why would I be eating a leaf?

Spearmint?

 

[J.T.B.]

What would happen if you grabbed a leaf on the holodeck and tried to eat it?

Ideally, the Holodeck would play that cartoon "chomp!" sound effect.

 

[The Old Mixer]

If I eat holographic spinach, can the holodeck make me muscle up like Popeye?

 

[Shawnster]

Which takes more power to generate? A holographic leaf or a replicated leaf?

 

[Tosk]

Which takes more power to generate? A holographic leaf or a replicated leaf?

Replicated would take more resources to make (matter doesn't come from nowhere) but once made the power consumption stops. A holographic leaf requires power until the leaf is no longer projected.

 

[SpyOne]

The theory about quick change replication when you try to eat something could finally explain how Wesley Crusher's snowball was able to be thrown outside of the holodeck.
If he tried to eat some snow first.

It wouldn't require that he tried to eat it: the snow almost certainly became real when he tried to touch it.
For some objects like furniture they might stay holographic, but a holographic chair probably doesn't simulate the texture of the fabric. So almost anything you try to touch with bare skin will be replaced with a replicated object.
This is also why characters who become wet on the holodeck remain wet outside it. And why most people dress in replicated clothes appropriate to the program rather than let the holodeck change their appearance: it can make you look right, but it can't make that feel right.

What if you had a marijuana plant in the holodeck... If you roll it and smoke it, do you get stoned?

That would depend on what safety protocols are in place. I suspect the default setting on Starfleet holodecks would prevent replicating chemicals like THC, so the experience would be as like smoking marijuana as possible without the getting stoned part.
Unless they've got something equivalent to what synthahol is to alcohol, in which case it would use that.

 

[Forbin]

I got a another one. What if you programed to holograms with the ability to conceive children and turn the safeties off. Could two holograms create a third hologram baby?

Jason

You'd be fine - holodecks create real food via replicator tech.

 

[Qonundrum]

Depending on episode, the eater would die from ulcers and malnutrition... or dehydration since that would happen faster. If the holodeck was that immersive to begin with.

Otherwise, as Dreaculasaurus already mentioned as it was the first thing that came to my mind as well, TNG was inconsistent in how the holodeck works and anyone can go in and whip alien snowballs and exit the holodeck not only sopping wet but spreading a slow-but-lethal airborne virus.

 

[Sophie74656]

it seems that many things you interact with are replicated and then recycled once the program is done.

From Encounter at Farpoint.
RIKER: I didn't believe these simulations could be this real.
DATA: Much of it is real, sir. If the transporters can convert our bodies to an energy beam, then back to the original pattern again

 

[eschaton]

What if you had a marijuana plant in the holodeck... If you roll it and smoke it, do you get stoned?

Is fire on the holodeck real fire? One would presume it could damage critical systems if it was.

Hell, how does the holodeck do ambient temperature in general? If you're simulating a lava cave do you need the evironmental controls to turn up the heat, or can photons somehow model the air being hot.

 

[at Quark's]

In the big goodbye (early TNG), there is a line that drew my attention. The holodeck program becomes unresponsive to voice commands and people from outside are trying to reach the people locked in the holodeck.

WESLEY: I don't know if I should. If this isn't done correctly, the programme could abort and everyone inside could vanish.

This almost suggests that to some extent, the holodeck projectors might not always discriminate between what was replicated on the holodeck and 'real' matter that came from outside. In later TNG/DS9/VOY, the usual mode seemed to be that if the program was aborted because of a malfuncction, everything but the real people would vanish. The entire holodeck might still explode or something, to up the ante (Worst Case Scenario), but at least people wouldn't simply vanish.

Or the difference is due to one of those crucial safety updates we never heard about

 

[XCV330]

Why bothering even building colonies once you have holodeck tech. just built a Yorktown sized holodecks and let the masses be happy and usually reasonably safe.