Rod's Alter Ego

Use Your Own Gas

I love this Dogwood tree. You have to appreciate the amount of bio-energy invested in making blooms this beautiful. Why should they be so beautiful? The usual explanation is that the brilliant colors serve as sirens for insects, who unwittingly spread the tree's germ. But a quick web search revealed an interesting fact: Dogwood trees have "perfect" flowers. Perfect in the sense that they are hermaphroditic, that is the flowers fulfill both male and female reproductive function, they self germinate. Two trees are not necessary, and neither are insects to spread the germ, a light breeze will do nicely. And so would an insipid flower, yet these are what we see. Pure mystery.

Speaking of bio-energetics... TheAmericanPeople^©, overfed as they are, are once again exhorting their government to do something -- anything! -- about the outrageously high gas prices. Transportation from point A to B is becoming ridiculously expensive they whine -- "why we might have to resort to desperate measures, like lowering our monthly cell phone usage <gasp!>, or worse, step back those Venti lattes to a measly Grande!" Sniffle sniffle. As was suggested on a bicycling blog recently, look inside yourselves people, you have the power!

Having consulted with Master on this, here's a lesson in basic biochemistry. An ordinary gasoline engine in a typical car is about 10-20% efficient. This means that about 80% of the energy available in a molecule of gasoline goes unused to the purpose of useful work. This should make TheAmericanPeople^© growl even louder at high gas prices. But now consider the efficiency of your own body's "engine".

The efficiency of glucose metabolism in a typical mammalian cell (which includes humans) is about 50%! Glucose metabolism is a multi-step enzymatic process which uses two molecules of ATP -- the energy your muscles use to do work -- to produce four. The end product of glucose metabolism (pyruvate) is, in turn, used to produce more ATP via the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation (the latter of which is beyond the scope of this lesson).

Better yet, even as the metabolism of one molecule of glucose yields two molecules of pyruvate that go into ATP production, the oxidation of one molecule of a long chain fatty acid (the stored form of fat in your body) produces sixteen!

The moral of the story is that TheAmericanPeople^© are literally sitting on a much more efficient form of energy as they gulp down those lattes, which are themselves loaded with even more glucose. Energy which can be used to, oh, I don't know, like walk, or pedal a bicycle.

Or chase squeakamunkas (see FAQ) up trees, as the case may be.

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Update: The author is not suggesting that ATP can replace gasoline in any practical way, only that the efficiency of the former is vastly superior to the latter in doing useful work.