Amazingly I read the an argument in the new scientist (it was one of those readers questions answered by readers) which claimed something like:
“because kinetic energy is 1/2m(v squared) (school physics), the faster you go, the more energy it takes by the square of your velocity. But distance increases linearly with velocity so that’s why it takes more energy to go faster ”
This is of course complete rubbish. If it were true then the earth would use up energy by travelling around space at high velocity. What this formula means is that it takes a certain amount of energy to accelerate an object to a certain speed. But of course you can potentially get that energy back again when you decelerate – that’s how some modern cars make efficiency gains when breaking – by absorbing the car’s kinetic energy back into a battery.
This is what I imagine the main reasons are:
1. You bob up and down more
2. Your efficiency is less because you have to cool yourself down a lot more which means pumping the blood around the arteries faster etc… and probably exceeding the body’s optimal temperature
3. Some chemical stuff about respiration
Here’s a tip for hotels:
If you’re staying in one of those high rise city hotels where you can’t open the window but you’re supposed to use the air conditioning but it doesn’t work. If as a result of this you can’t sleep: take a bottle out of the fridge (one of the ones that costs a lot of money), put it against your wrists – it will cool your blood. It will take about 4 hours to warm up fully. When it does, you can take another one out. In the morning you can put them all back.
Yesterday I did an interview for a job at ENISA. I’ll get the results in 2 weeks. If I got the job it would mean moving to Crete. More about it when I get the result.
Question: what happens when you send a load of insurance executives to set up a holiday resort (taken in Switzerland – val versasca) – I’m sure they’ve got a good point of course and a lot of people do die in the river. It just struck me as something you’d never see in neighbouring Italy…
