Friday, July 27, 2007

Math error

In Tuesday's post, I calculated how many gallons of gas equivalent I have in excess fat. In rereading the entry, I saw this:
Human fat tissue contains about 87% lipids, so that 1 kg of body-fat tissue has roughly the caloric energy of 870 g of pure fat, or 7800 kcal.

and I realized that value for a 1kg of fat has been calculated for me, so my reducing the excess weight by 13% was in error. I should have used the original value times 7800 kcal/kg giving me an excess of 198,120 kcal.

198120 kcal * 4.184 kJ/kcal = 828,934 kJ or ~829 MJ

829 MJ / 131 MJ/gal = 6.3 gal of gas equivalent.

That amount would then get me between 180 - 250 miles. Still not very efficient considering that I could ride that in, say, 3 days.

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