MentalEdge comments on TIL that a gram of uranium contains 20 million kcals so if you ate just one gram of uranium you would have enough calories for the rest of your life.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Obviusly.

But if we're gonna do the math that way, every atom in the universe has an insane amount of energy.

It's just to get at it, you need to either split or fuse the atoms. Doing this just happens to be easy with uranium, it's not that special in terms of energy density.

And a bomb calorimeter isn't precises either, but it gets close because burning the food is what our bodies do, too.

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[–] Poojabber@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

There is a fire in my belly when I eat?

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[–] Greg@lemmy.ca [S] 3 points 10 months ago

That explains why my butt hole burns sometimes

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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago*

Not your belly, but in your cells, yes.

The reason you need oxygen, is that your cells use it to "burn" stuff a few atoms at a time, for energy.

It's the same reaction as fire. Oxidation. Though inside our bodies it happens in an extremely controlled manner.

Although cellular respiration is technically a combustion reaction, it is an unusual one because of the slow, controlled release of energy from the series of reactions.

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