“John-Paul Flintoff of the Times drove to Oxford and back, a total of a hundred miles, and noticed that he had a bottle of water on the seat.
He wondered how much energy it took to move it:
I converted the weight of the bottle (1 kilo) into pounds, and divided the distance (100 miles) into feet, using one of many online conversion sites. Then I converted the total number of foot-pounds into kilowatt hours.
The result: 0.437 477 242 4.
In other words, if I had left the bottle at home I could more usefully have used the same amount of energy to light my house all evening.
”
pmharrington
11.11.08
