Everyone knows that a huge part of going green has to do with reducing energy use across the board, or as I now like to put it, lowering my own personal carbon foot print, impressive terminology huh? But in order to figure out how much energy we use as a family I knew I would have to convert my watts usage over to kilowatts. When I looked on the Internet to look for a conversion chart this is one of the explanations I found;
Remember Energy is always conserved (such conservation is known as the first law of thermodynamics). Entropy is not. When you posses energy with the lowest entropy you posses the most useful form of energy for conversion to work. When you convert energy from one form to another, you create entropy (almost always) - and when you do, the process is called irreversible (because you generate entropy). In ideal cases you may have a process that does not cause any irreversibility, and consequently no entropy is generated. Electrochemical processes and processes where work is converted to work are such processes, but often not quite a 100% reversible. Anytime heat is produced and transferred from one temperature to another (i.e. across a temperature gradient)- the process is irreversible because entropy is generated.
Well certainly that explained it. This was almost as confusing to me as the time I tried to figure out my metabolic rate while standing on one foot with two fingers pressed against my neck while trying to count the beats with a stop watch in my other hand, as the cute little spandex red headed instructor encouraged me not to give up. For some reason my hearing is diminished when I exercise, maybe it has something to do with the amount of blood rushing to my brain, or maybe it’s simply that I can’t hear anything over my own self gasping for air. At any rate I thought I would have more luck trying to understand the theory of relativity than trying to convert watts over to kilowatts.
At dinner that night my husband asked me how I was coming along with my conversion project. “Well, I have decided to ditch that. Instead I think we’ll try to keep it simple by minimizing our usage.” Our sixteen year old daughter rolled her eyes and groaned, “Ugh. Like it’s not bad enough that you have switched my bathroom lights over to CFL’s and that I look like a clown every time I use make-up, but now you’re saying we can’t use the lights we do have?”
“No,” I snapped, ” I was talking about other energy uses, like the air conditioner, and the ceiling fan you leave running all night long.”
“Let me get this straight,” she snapped back, “so not only can’t we use the air, but now the ceiling fan has to be turned off. Hmm, I wonder how much worse my life could suck? Looking like a clown, not being able to sleep because I can’t have my fan on and what’s the other thing, oh yeah, and sweating like a pig all summer long – yippee.” She whined. I decided it probably was not the best time to bring up the subject of starting a composting pile. Yes, probably better to leave that for another day.
Remember Energy is always conserved (such conservation is known as the first law of thermodynamics). Entropy is not. When you posses energy with the lowest entropy you posses the most useful form of energy for conversion to work. When you convert energy from one form to another, you create entropy (almost always) - and when you do, the process is called irreversible (because you generate entropy). In ideal cases you may have a process that does not cause any irreversibility, and consequently no entropy is generated. Electrochemical processes and processes where work is converted to work are such processes, but often not quite a 100% reversible. Anytime heat is produced and transferred from one temperature to another (i.e. across a temperature gradient)- the process is irreversible because entropy is generated.
Well certainly that explained it. This was almost as confusing to me as the time I tried to figure out my metabolic rate while standing on one foot with two fingers pressed against my neck while trying to count the beats with a stop watch in my other hand, as the cute little spandex red headed instructor encouraged me not to give up. For some reason my hearing is diminished when I exercise, maybe it has something to do with the amount of blood rushing to my brain, or maybe it’s simply that I can’t hear anything over my own self gasping for air. At any rate I thought I would have more luck trying to understand the theory of relativity than trying to convert watts over to kilowatts.
At dinner that night my husband asked me how I was coming along with my conversion project. “Well, I have decided to ditch that. Instead I think we’ll try to keep it simple by minimizing our usage.” Our sixteen year old daughter rolled her eyes and groaned, “Ugh. Like it’s not bad enough that you have switched my bathroom lights over to CFL’s and that I look like a clown every time I use make-up, but now you’re saying we can’t use the lights we do have?”
“No,” I snapped, ” I was talking about other energy uses, like the air conditioner, and the ceiling fan you leave running all night long.”
“Let me get this straight,” she snapped back, “so not only can’t we use the air, but now the ceiling fan has to be turned off. Hmm, I wonder how much worse my life could suck? Looking like a clown, not being able to sleep because I can’t have my fan on and what’s the other thing, oh yeah, and sweating like a pig all summer long – yippee.” She whined. I decided it probably was not the best time to bring up the subject of starting a composting pile. Yes, probably better to leave that for another day.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment