• Question: How Long Would it take if you burned a vegetable for energy?

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      Asked by chiillzyy to Chia-Yu, Helen, Matthew, Matt H, Rhod on 20 Jun 2013.
      • Photo: Matthew Hudson

        Matthew Hudson answered on 20 Jun 2013:

        The ‘calorie’ count you see on food is actually a measure of how much energy that is stored within that food item. I carrot is about 40 calories and there are 4 joules of energy per calorie, so that’s 160 joules of energy.

        A 60 watt light bulb uses 60 joules of energy per second, so that would give you about 2.6 seconds of light from your carrot!

        You’d probably be better of eating it and then riding a bike connected to a generator to convert your movement into electricity!

      • Photo: Chia-Yu Lin

        Chia-Yu Lin answered on 21 Jun 2013:

        I will depend on your purpose. The example has been given by Matt, but please remember that the conversion of heat into electricity is not 100%, and burning the vegetable will produce CO2, so this is not a good idea to use vegetable as the energy

      • Photo: Helen Pritchard-Smith

        Helen Pritchard-Smith answered on 25 Jun 2013:

        It depends on the vegetable, the more sugar or carbohydrates the longer it will burn for. This is true of most food, you do get complex carbohydrates like potatoes, they would burn for longer than a carrot. So if you have to run a lightbulb on vegetables, choose wisely.

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