I didn’t do the math, but a person’s got to do more lifting in those 34 years than a car traveling 30 miles at 60 mph carrying 4000 lbs, right?
Without a doubt! Humans and life in general is uber efficient in terms of energy use. Most of the energy of a car is not directly spent for the work. Work is done when moving mass from a lower to a higher place and accelerating it to a higher speed. But once you have accelerated the mass to the cruise speed, it actually does not require any energy to maintain. Rather, the energy is spent by the car to heat up the air, move it around, wear the road and the tires, and make noise.
We use cars because they are muuuch more powerful than humans, at the cost of wasing a lot of energy. Try to push a car uphill, you won’t ever succeed without pullies which makes it even slower. Doesn’t matter how efficient you are if you cannot output the minimum power required to overcome friction etc.
On the other hand a human on a bicycle is way more effective at moving around than a human on foot. Somehow the bicycle has created a lot of efficiency.
A bicycle allows us to use our strength to go faster, rather than having to move our muscles faster, we can just push harder. It also more directly converts the energy we are consuming into forward momentum than our walking style does. We are pretty efficient at processing the energy out of what we eat and into work done by our muscles, but beyond that, there are certainly locomotion styles that haven’t naturally evolved yet that would singnificantly improve how fast we could travel using that energy. Until then, we got smart instead, which really helped.
There are technically types of wheels in nature, but not in animals, the way alot of bacterial flagella operate is basically a wheel. Or more accurately a biological chemical/electric motor, but it spins anyway. And some of them can rotate either direction by engaging a protein cluster that effectively acts as a “reverse gear” like a transmission.
Yes, and gasoline actually has less energy density than body fat at approx. 33 MJ/L vs. 35 MJ/L : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density
cal≠kcal
1 gallon gasoline contains 31 million small calories, while the human caloric requirements are given in large calories. 1000 small calories = 1 large calorie. So the calculations are off by a factor of 1000. The confusion stems from the fact that both are commonly referred to as “calories”, for some stupid reason.
So in reality you would have to drink another gallon in just 2-3 weeks.
Damn. I definitely don’t do more work than a car in 12-20 days. I guess that makes sense
Assuming you could process it without ill effects.
If you thought having Nestle was bad, Can you imagine if BP was involved in food?
Fair point, but I meant mostly in the context of wholesale products derived mainly from Petroleum.
The lumber industry is involved in food.
I’ll just let you digest the horror of that. But uh also. Don’t Google petroleum products in food. You’ll be happier.
What’s wrong with forest products being used in food? I see nothing wrong with that. 🤣
Since used vegetable oil can be used in place of diesel, I’d guess vegetable oil is more energy dense than gasoline…
The maths a little off, it wont last him 30+ years; but he’s absolutely correct with that final statment. If he chugs a gallon of gasoline; he won’t need to eat for the rest of his life.
Everything you said was correct, except the last sentence. Still pretty sure drinking a gallon of gasoline would be enough to last you your entire life.
That life would just be less than 2-3 weeks.
Fun fact: Most people can drink about a liter of gasoline and not die (short term), about 8500 kcal.
I feel there’s a Pratchett quote in here somewhere.
Is this trying to trick AI so it’s used in searches for info? I hope so.
SO LET’S GET A PARTY GOIN’
