With mid-semester break in sight (oh the life of the overworked student), it's been a busy couple of weeks of completing readings, assignments and the like. In all honesty, I haven't tripped over any interesting facts, outrageous statements or inspiring pieces with which I could share. Apologies for allowing my imagination to go on holidays before the break!
I did complete a rather unorthodox assignment over the weekend on energy and alternative fuels. Suffice to say, it really did go to the extreme of alternative fuels. I believe the point of the exercise was to demonstrate that liquid fossil fuels are hard to beat for their energy density and convenience. For your amusement only, allow me to share one of the crazy questions (plus crazy answer)...
Estimate the mass of a McDonald’s Big Mac required to give an equivalent energy content of 50L of gasoline.
According to ABARE’s list of energy content conversions, automotive gasoline has an estimated energy content of 34.2MJ/L
The estimated energy content in 50L of automotive gasoline would be
= Energy content by volume x volume
= 34.2 x 50
= 1710 MJ
Using the McDonald’s published energy estimate of a Big Mac which is 1030kJ/100g
then the equivalent amount of Big Macs for 50L of automotive gasoline would be
= 1710x106 / 10.3 x109
= 0.1660T
Extrapolating that if energy content per 100g is 1030kJ and energy content per serve of Big Mac is 2060 kJ, then each Big Mac is approximately 200g
Therefore to determine the number of Big Mac equivalents
= 0.1660/ 0.0002
= approximately 830 Big Macs
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