metabolism

nash said:

If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it for you
anyway.

Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.

--
Home page: http://members.westnet.com.au/mvw

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it for you
anyway.

Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.

--

Well its not me.

nash said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it for you
anyway.

Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.

--

Well its not me.

Not to continue a mini-war but has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks down
to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane CH3.
We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn with
O2. It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy source,
not quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.
Bill Baka

"Bill" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

nash said:

Quoted message said:

> If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it for
> you
> anyway.
Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.

--

Well its not me.

Not to continue a mini-war but has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks down to
6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane CH3.
We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn with O2.
It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy source, not
quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.
Bill Baka

Is it a liquid like gasoline. Would you need a different engine, for a
car, than it has now? Has it been used before to fuel cars?

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks
down to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane
CH3. We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn
with O2.

Carbohydrates? For what it can do, very efficient.

Sure, carbs are only ~7 Calories/gram. Methane and hydrogen puts out 13
Calories/gram and 26 Cal/g.

But if energy density was the only thing we needed, evolution/God/god
would have given us all internal nuclear fusion generators (it doesn't
get more efficient than 20000000 Cal/g, guys! 🙂). No, The energy source
also has to be dispersible (soluable in water, in this case) and stable
(as to be used safely by every cell), the reaction has to be
controllable and slow (proteins don't like heat or cold very much).
Finally, it has to have a high physical density. These make hydrogen and
methane very unlikely to be energy sources for anything bigger than a
couple of cells.

Quoted message said:

It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy
source, not quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.

Methane is already used as fuel... we call it natural gas.

Besides the stoves and water heaters, there's also natural gas cars.
According to
(http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/afv/gas_vehicles.html), Chevy
Silverados and GMC Sierras both have natural gas versions. You can even
retrofit (http://www.baytechcorp.com/) your car to use natural gas. There's
a few natural gas "gas stations" around every major city in the States.

--
Nodey
(Univ. of California, San Diego - Bioengineering)

Nodey said:

Sure, carbs are only ~7 Calories/gram.

Carbs are ~ 4, last I checked. You weren't thinking of alcohol, were
you?
I ask because I usually am.
_A.

In article <[email hidden]>,

Nodey said:

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks
down to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane
CH3. We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn
with O2.

Carbohydrates? For what it can do, very efficient.

Sure, carbs are only ~7 Calories/gram. Methane and hydrogen puts out 13
Calories/gram and 26 Cal/g.

But if energy density was the only thing we needed, evolution/God/god
would have given us all internal nuclear fusion generators

Actually, we've already got one. It's communal, though.
Gives us vitamin D, too.

cheers,
Tom

--
Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca

[email hidden] wrote in news:1166470935.381237.303870@
48g2000cwx.googlegroups.com:

Quoted message said:

Carbs are ~ 4, last I checked. You weren't thinking of alcohol, were
you?

Perfectly right, sorry. I actually just grabbed a box of cookies, read the
label, and did a rough estimation.

--
Nodey

Nodey said:

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks
down to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane
CH3. We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn
with O2.

Carbohydrates? For what it can do, very efficient.

Sure, carbs are only ~7 Calories/gram. Methane and hydrogen puts out 13
Calories/gram and 26 Cal/g.

~4 KiloCalories actually, in purist terms. It is probably 4.0124 rounded
down to an integer or something like that. Alcohol is, I think, about 7
KCals, being kind of an odd carbohydrate.

Quoted message said:

But if energy density was the only thing we needed, evolution/God/god
would have given us all internal nuclear fusion generators (it doesn't
get more efficient than 20000000 Cal/g, guys! 🙂).

Are you sure that is all? Converting matter to energy gives a hell of a
big bang. Bikini Atoll was about 12 Megatons from a few Kg of material
and that was nowhere near 100% conversion. That would be like take an
aspirin size energy pill and pedal around the world ten times, really,
really fast.

No, The energy source

Quoted message said:

also has to be dispersible (soluable in water, in this case) and stable
(as to be used safely by every cell), the reaction has to be
controllable and slow (proteins don't like heat or cold very much).
Finally, it has to have a high physical density. These make hydrogen and
methane very unlikely to be energy sources for anything bigger than a
couple of cells.

Quoted message said:

It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy
source, not quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.

Methane is already used as fuel... we call it natural gas.

My whole original line of thought was that Methane can be converted to a
liquid at a reasonable temperature, not minus a gazillion degrees like
Hydrogen. I think liquid Methane would give the most efficient and safe
fuel use, even if one atom of Carbon has to be burned for every 3 Hydrogen.

Quoted message said:

Besides the stoves and water heaters, there's also natural gas cars.
According to
(http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/afv/gas_vehicles.html), Chevy
Silverados and GMC Sierras both have natural gas versions. You can even
retrofit (http://www.baytechcorp.com/) your car to use natural gas. There's
a few natural gas "gas stations" around every major city in the States.

Better than Propane I would think. I had Propane once and the mileage
was terrible, and now it costs more than gas, sort of adding insult to
injury to the people who used it as a clean air alternative.
Bill Baka

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Better than Propane I would think. I had Propane once and the mileage

was terrible, and now it costs more than gas, sort of adding insult to
injury to the people who used it as a clean air alternative.
Bill Baka<<<

I know, I bought an alternative energy stock and lost anyway.

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

Alcohol is, I
think, about 7 KCals, being kind of an odd carbohydrate.

That's because it isn't one (carbyhydrates always have a 2:1 hydrogen-
oxygen ratio). It's the anaerobic product for plants and bacteria - what
they couldn't burn because of a lack of oxygen, so it's not much of a
surprise that it releases a lot of energy when we process it aerobically
in our bodies.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

(it
doesn't get more efficient than 20000000 Cal/g, guys! 🙂).

Are you sure that is all? Converting matter to energy gives a hell of
a big bang. Bikini Atoll was about 12 Megatons from a few Kg of
material

Castle Bravo was actually a 15-Megaton device (they expected it to be 8,
but messed up on the fusion). But it's impossible for it just to be a few
kg of material - the critical mass for uranium is 50kg and plutonium is
10kg. I don't remember what it used for fission, but the entire bomb was
more than 10000kg
(http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html). So with 0.5
Cal/g as the energy density for TNT (off the top of my head, but
shouldn't be far off), and say half the bomb weight was the
fission/fusion material:

15*10^6(tons)*1000(to kg)*1000(to g)*0.5(to Cal)/10000kg/1000(to g)
= 750000 Cal/g

Quoted message said:

and that was nowhere near 100% conversion.
That would be like
take an aspirin size energy pill and pedal around the world ten times,
really, really fast.

I think you underestimate a mass-energy conversion. As far as theoretical
100% goes, then: E = mc^2:

1(gram)/1000(to kg)* (3*10^8)^2 /1000(to kJ)/4.18(to Cal)
= 90 trillion J/g (= 22 billion Cal/gram)

So 2 "aspirin pills" can feed 11 million people for a day, and 33 of them
will power the entire US for an hour? Sounds like my kind of pill!

Quoted message said:

My whole original line of thought was that Methane can be converted to
a liquid at a reasonable temperature, not minus a gazillion degrees
like Hydrogen.

It's still pretty bad, only something like 20 degrees above liquid
nitrogen. And it's still a fossil fuel. But yes, there are methane fuel
cells in development. The problem is that they need more sophisticated
structure and operate at higher temperatures (several hundred to thousand
degrees Celsius) (http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid556.php), and so can
only be used for big stuff, like powering buildings.

Nodey

Nodey said:

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

Alcohol is, I
think, about 7 KCals, being kind of an odd carbohydrate.

That's because it isn't one (carbyhydrates always have a 2:1 hydrogen-
oxygen ratio). It's the anaerobic product for plants and bacteria - what
they couldn't burn because of a lack of oxygen, so it's not much of a
surprise that it releases a lot of energy when we process it aerobically
in our bodies.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

(it
doesn't get more efficient than 20000000 Cal/g, guys! 🙂).

Are you sure that is all? Converting matter to energy gives a hell of
a big bang. Bikini Atoll was about 12 Megatons from a few Kg of
material

Castle Bravo was actually a 15-Megaton device (they expected it to be 8,
but messed up on the fusion).

Yeah,
I remember them stating that they blew it on the matter to energy
conversion, and something to the effect that if it all fused it might
have been more like 25 Megatons or so, leaving it up to conjecture.

But it's impossible for it just to be a few

Quoted message said:

kg of material - the critical mass for uranium is 50kg and plutonium is
10kg. I don't remember what it used for fission, but the entire bomb was
more than 10000kg

That isn't what I was taught in grade school in the 50's, but that might
have been intentional mis-information back then. I heard that about 2 Kg
could go critical and that 2 or 3 workers on the Manhattan project were
killed by a radiation flash when they got 2 pieces of enriched Uranium
together. The 2 guys that were doing it died within about 24 hours and
the only other guy in the room about 30 feet away died within the week.
It's an old memory so I could be wrong.
I also remember some tidbit about the Soviets setting off the largest
bomb ever at about 75 Megatons but that would have made for a 50,000Kg
bomb and blown the snot out of most of Siberia or wherever they did it.

Quoted message said:

(http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/Castle.html). So with 0.5
Cal/g as the energy density for TNT (off the top of my head, but
shouldn't be far off), and say half the bomb weight was the
fission/fusion material:

15*10^6(tons)*1000(to kg)*1000(to g)*0.5(to Cal)/10000kg/1000(to g)
= 750000 Cal/g

Quoted message said:

and that was nowhere near 100% conversion.
That would be like
take an aspirin size energy pill and pedal around the world ten times,
really, really fast.

I think you underestimate a mass-energy conversion. As far as theoretical
100% goes, then: E = mc^2:

1(gram)/1000(to kg)* (3*10^8)^2 /1000(to kJ)/4.18(to Cal)
= 90 trillion J/g (= 22 billion Cal/gram)

I didn't look it up if that's what you mean. I had a bit torrent client
running in the background and my computer crawls when I do that.

Quoted message said:

So 2 "aspirin pills" can feed 11 million people for a day, and 33 of them
will power the entire US for an hour? Sounds like my kind of pill!

Sounds like mine too, making that estimate way too low. How about around
the world a few thousand times?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

My whole original line of thought was that Methane can be converted to
a liquid at a reasonable temperature, not minus a gazillion degrees
like Hydrogen.

It's still pretty bad, only something like 20 degrees above liquid
nitrogen.

I was kind of referring to the fact that Hydrogen has to be at near
absolute zero Kelvin (-273C) and Methane (and Nitrogen) are well above
that. Still cryo temperatures, but much more reasonable. Propane
liquifies at -35F (-33C?) so can be made liquid under pressure.

And it's still a fossil fuel. But yes, there are methane fuel

Quoted message said:

cells in development.

I was only thinking piston engines since fuel cells have a way to go
before they are mature enough for my liking. All the hype about fuel
cells for cell phones is, to me, pretty unlikely, since Joe consumer
would probably blow himself up with his phone. They may try to make it
idiot proof but there are always better idiots out there.

The problem is that they need more sophisticated

Quoted message said:

structure and operate at higher temperatures (several hundred to thousand
degrees Celsius) (http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid556.php), and so can
only be used for big stuff, like powering buildings.

Nodey

Agreed. I don't work with that stuff anymore since Electronics,
Chemistry, Physics, and all my other interests have gone into
information overload since computers and the Internet, but I try to keep
up with the developments, at least.
Bill Baka

Bill said:

nash said:

Quoted message said:

> If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it
> for you
> anyway.

Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.

--

Well its not me.

Not to continue a mini-war but has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks down
to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane CH3.
We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn with
O2. It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy source,
not quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.
Bill Baka

I think you will find that C6H12O6 breaks down to CO2 and water, not
carbon and water.

EJ in NJ

Ernie Willson said:

Bill said:

nash said:

>> If you cannot prove you are right at least admit it. I proved it
>> for you
>> anyway.
>
> Someone needs to get out of the house and go for a ride.
>
> --

Well its not me.

Not to continue a mini-war but has anyone given any thought to how
inefficient carbohydrates are? The generic is C6H12O6 which breaks
down to 6C (usable) +6(H2O) water. Too bad we can't metabolize Methane
CH3.
We would be supercharged since both the Carbon and Hydrogen burn with
O2. It also seems that this would be a good alternative energy source,
not quite pure H2 but better than your average Petro fuel.
Bill Baka

I think you will find that C6H12O6 breaks down to CO2 and water, not
carbon and water.

EJ in NJ

I said 6C (USABLE), as in ready to burn. When we metabolize, the H2O
merely gets exhaled and the Carbon used.
Simple.
Bill Baka

I said 6C (USABLE), as in ready to burn. When we metabolize, the H2O
merely gets exhaled and the Carbon used.
Simple.
Bill Baka

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in news:e00ih.24244$wc5.15166
@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net:

Quoted message said:

I said 6C (USABLE), as in ready to burn.

Actually, that's quite wrong, because the "broken down" and "burning" view
of things is much too simplified to explain metabolism.

Remember that chemical energy lies in the bonds, and not "in" the atoms.
You don't get energy from "carbon", you get energy from breaking up the
(strong) carbon-oxygen bonds and leave the atoms with weaker bonds, or no
bond at all. There is where you extract energy - the leftover energy from
making a strong bond into a weak bond.

So in the metabolic process, never is "carbon" used. Instead, the citric
acid cycle (also called Krebs cycle, http://www.sp.uconn.edu/
~bi107vc/images/mol/krebs_cycle.gif) and the electron transport chain
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Etc2.png) extracts energy from all the
high-energy electrons.

After the energy stripping, the waste product are CO2 and H2O. Never did
you have carbons coming off and getting used.

Quoted message said:

When we metabolize, the H2O
merely gets exhaled and the Carbon used.

On the contrary, CO2 is usually simply exhaled, while water can be reused
by the body.

Nodey

Nodey said:

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in news:e00ih.24244$wc5.15166
@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net:

Quoted message said:

I said 6C (USABLE), as in ready to burn.

Actually, that's quite wrong, because the "broken down" and "burning" view
of things is much too simplified to explain metabolism.

Remember that chemical energy lies in the bonds, and not "in" the atoms.
You don't get energy from "carbon", you get energy from breaking up the
(strong) carbon-oxygen bonds and leave the atoms with weaker bonds, or no
bond at all. There is where you extract energy - the leftover energy from
making a strong bond into a weak bond.

Semi correct. You use energy to break the water away from the Carbon and
gain it from burning the Carbon. If there was a way to derive energy
from separating the Carbon out then why mine coal???? You might have a
trick lab experiment up your sleeve but I was talking real world and not
trying to teach Chemistry or Physics.

Quoted message said:

So in the metabolic process, never is "carbon" used. Instead, the citric
acid cycle (also called Krebs cycle, http://www.sp.uconn.edu/
~bi107vc/images/mol/krebs_cycle.gif) and the electron transport chain
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Etc2.png) extracts energy from all the
high-energy electrons.

Quit quoting Wikipedia. Too many people post questionable stuff on it,
and it has caused many comments about that in my primary community of
Electronics. One engineer posted some stuff that was accurate and
somebody else kept changing it to not-accurate.

Quoted message said:

After the energy stripping, the waste product are CO2 and H2O. Never did
you have carbons coming off and getting used.

So tell me again how you can break down C6H12O6 to H2O and CO2???? That
requires Oxygen which is the main way we get out energy, burning the Carbon.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

When we metabolize, the H2O
merely gets exhaled and the Carbon used.

On the contrary, CO2 is usually simply exhaled, while water can be reused
by the body.

That is nit picking.

Quoted message said:

Nodey

So, does the above indicate you are an over educated lab rat? I have
dealt with doctorates who could not think outside the box and were thus
useless in the real world. Tell me you aren't one of them, please.
Bill Baka
I am copying myself only to remind me to check out the krebs cycle for
authenticity, not go to Mythipedia.

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

Nodey said:

Bill <[email hidden]> wrote in news:e00ih.24244$wc5.15166
@newssvr25.news.prodigy.net:

Remember that chemical energy lies in the bonds, and not "in" the
atoms. You don't get energy from "carbon", you get energy from
breaking up the (strong) carbon-oxygen bonds and leave the atoms with
weaker bonds, or no bond at all. There is where you extract energy -
the leftover energy from making a strong bond into a weak bond.

Semi correct. You use energy to break the water away from the Carbon
and gain it from burning the Carbon.

Not even semi-correct. Oxidation by oxygen (burning) is one of the ways
to break bones and release energy, but not nearly the only way.

If bonds aren't the symbolic source of chemical energy, why does this
page exist? What is this "chemical bond energy" business?
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/c120/bondel.html

Or this page?
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/molecule/boneng.html

Or this one? http://www.bcpl.net/~kdrews/bonding/bonding.html

Or explain to me how double-displacement reactions, not involving oxygen,
manage to release heat?
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/thermo/faq/why-are-metal-
displacements-exothermic.shtml

Quoted message said:

If there was a way to derive
energy from separating the Carbon out then why mine coal????

.... That is some terrible logic.

It's like saying "What do you mean soap helps clean my hand? I washed my
hand with just water the other day and it got clean. So, soap is
definitely not doing any cleaning."

You are taking an example of a macroscopic phenomenon and saying "there,
that's how everything works".

The fact that coal burns doesn't mean carbon is the only thing that
burns. Refer again to, for example, exothermic double-displacement
reactions listed previously.

Quoted message said:

You might
have a trick lab experiment up your sleeve but I was talking real
world and not trying to teach Chemistry or Physics.

The fact that you're trying for a practical interpretation is great, but
that doesn't mean it can be so simplified that it is wrong.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

So in the metabolic process, never is "carbon" used. Instead, the
citric acid cycle (also called Krebs cycle, http://www.sp.uconn.edu/
~bi107vc/images/mol/krebs_cycle.gif) and the electron transport chain
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Etc2.png) extracts energy from
all the high-energy electrons.

Quit quoting Wikipedia. Too many people post questionable stuff on it,
and it has caused many comments about that in my primary community of
Electronics. One engineer posted some stuff that was accurate and
somebody else kept changing it to not-accurate.

What, that I have a single picture that's from Wikipedia means that I
have quoted it? Hmm. Why does the other picture come from an .edu?
(which, of course, is not proof of its "absolute correctness", but should
have alerted you to not make hasty assumptions). Never in writing all my
posts have I _ever_ quoted Wikipedia, and I try to write about what I
actually know to be true.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

When we metabolize, the H2O
merely gets exhaled and the Carbon used.

On the contrary, CO2 is usually simply exhaled, while water can be
reused by the body.

That is nit picking.

Arguing over accepted definitions is nitpicking. Correcting spelling and
grammar is nitpicking. Arguing over word diction and interpretations is
nitpicking.

When something is _factually wrong_ and I point it out, explain to me how
that is nitpicking?

Quoted message said:

So, does the above indicate you are an over educated lab rat? I have
dealt with doctorates who could not think outside the box and were
thus useless in the real world.

I don't like to think about myself as a lab rat. Maybe I am; how you
judge me is your choice. But you seem to have come to that conclusion
rather quickly, and through a series of bad logic.

Quoted message said:

Tell me you aren't one of them,
please. Bill Baka
I am copying myself only to remind me to check out the krebs cycle for
authenticity, not go to Mythipedia.

Way to be not to be stubborn and opinionated! You know, the things that
make you better than those stuck-up doctorates?

Hey, I read this other book once, and things in it were wrong! And I read
a couple more, and they all had wrong stuff in it! Let's call all books
shmooks!

--
Nodey

In article <[email hidden]>,

Bill said:

I also remember some tidbit about the Soviets setting off the largest
bomb ever at about 75 Megatons but that would have made for a 50,000Kg
bomb and blown the snot out of most of Siberia or wherever they did it.

That was the Czar Bomba, and I think it was more like 50 megatons.
At any rate, IIRC, it turned a bunch of Soviet underwear into
fudge repositories when they realized what kind of geopolitical
environment they were creating, and inspired them to think about
signing non-proliferation and test-limiting treaties.

That was just before the Cuba missile thing (which was a Soviet
response to the Turkey missile thing.)

cheers,
Tom

--
Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats curlicue vcn dot bc dot ca