December 27 2007 William writes:
What is the energy required to produce common items such as…
- cinder blocks
- metal sign posts
- beer bottles
- aluminum cans
- plastic bottles
- computers
- clocks
- rebar
Knowing the energy requirements for the products would allow one to more accurately determine which products are sensible to produce.
To determine this would require analysis of the production and transportation methods used for each product. Much of this information could be found on the web and could then be modeled.
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December 16 2007 William writes:
Tips for traveling sleeper class on indian trains:
- get a ticket.
- online at http://www.indianrail.gov.in/
- at a train station (reservation desk) - look for the tourist window
- even if the train you like has a waitlist there is usually a quota of seats saved for tourists. Look or ask for the tourist quota and show your tourist visa.
- Berths (berth = bunk bed)
- Upper berth - always can sleep but and effort to get in and out of bed.
- Middel berth - can not go to sleep unitil everyone is ready
- Lower birth - can not go to sleep until everyone is ready, close to the luggage under the seat.
- Food
- tea & coffee is always availiby from the servers roaming the aisles. 5Rs.
- water and soda is availible at every stop and occasionaly from sellers
- meals of rice and curry can be bought for 20Rs.
Categories: India | No Comments »
December 15 2007 William writes:
It is estimated that 64% of the US, or 129.6 million people are overweight3. How much unused energy is this?
The Reserve:
An overweight person is defined as having a Body Mass Index (BMI) greater than 25. A crude estimate for this is if someones BMI is 25 they are 25 lb overweight. 129.6 million people have at least 25 lb each or 3.24 billion lbs total of unnecessary fat in the US alone. Every gram of fat4 contains 9 Calories and 453.6 grams are in every pound5. Therefor there are 13.23 trillion calories of energy reserves walking around this country.
13.23 trillion Calories =
- 420 million gallons of gasoline
- 314 million gallons of diesel fuel
- 15.4 billion kilowatt hours of electricity
- 13.2 million tons of explosives
- 1.538649e-8 zettawatthour?
This rough calucation does not include the inefficiencies of converting the food to fat and the wasted energy spent carrying this extra weight. With these additional variables included it would not be surprising if the amount of wasted energy of obesity was 5 times the values listed above.
References:
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Categories: Energy | 1 Comment »