I wonder if it’d be worth it to convert a car to run on sugar?
A king-size Snickers has 541 Calories. That’s Calories with a capital “C,” or 1,000 lowercase calories. A small-“c” calorie represents the energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree Celsius. So that Snickers could theoretically heat a gram of water 541,000 degrees or, more realistically, bring a gallon and a half of water from nearly freezing to nearly boiling.
The energy in food is typically released when, through a complex biochemical pathway, sugars, starches and fats react with oxygen from the lungs. It’s a form of slow-motion burning that, thankfully, rarely involves fire.
But you can liberate the same amount of energy in much less time by mixing the Snickers with a more concentrated source of oxygen—say, the potent oxidizer potassium perchlorate. The result is basically rocket fuel. Ignited on an open fireproof table, it burns vigorously, consuming an entire candy bar in a few seconds with a rushing tower of fire. If you could bottle the energy of kids playing and turn it into a Molotov cocktail, this is what it would look like.
There’s a video of the rocket blasting off on the site.
Well, for that you need more powerful stuff, like: Chocolate!
http://www.newscientisttech.com/article.ns?id=mg19025546.000
It needs bacteria to release the Hidrogen, but it seems to work with other sugars.
And I need some more sugar to remember it is hy drogen!
I’m glad they’ve found a possible use for those Oreo things. Ones we get here just aren’t for eating (yuk!).
A few episodes ago, Mythbusters made a rocket that used a salami for fuel. Apparently all that fat makes for a nice energy density, and the stuff is hard enough that it’s vaguely machineable - they were able to bore a hole through it without having it turn to mush.
This may look like a salami, it may smell like a salami, it may even taste like a salami, but it’s rocket fuel!
