Posted: August 2nd, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Uncategorized, environment, personal | Tags: auto, driving, money, saving, zipcar | No Comments »
ZipCar is proving to be quite awesome. We are constantly bombarded with useless new products and services, but here is one that actually adds value to my life. Imagine that.
This past two weeks, I’ve used:
- a Prius to get groceries and dinner
- a Civic to check out an apartment in SF
- a 328i to check out an apartment in SF and visit Golden Gate Park
- a Nissan Versa to get groceries and go up to Mount Diablo to check for some of this week’s meteor shower action
- a Honda Odyssey to move from Berkeley to a new apartment in SF
- a Mini to get back over to Oakland for a Saturday homebrew BBQ
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Posted: March 7th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: environment, sketches | Tags: car, carbon, change, climate, combustion, dioxide, driving, emissions, fuel, global, warming | 6 Comments »
I recently read that burning one gallon of gasoline releases about 19 lbs of carbon dioxide.
The mass on either side of a chemical reaction must balance, so I thought to myself, “If a gallon of fuel weighs 6 lbs, where is the other 13 lbs coming from?”
Well, it turns out that the additional weight is from the 21 lbs of oxygen that your car sucks from the atmosphere to burn that gallon of gas! Your car also spits out one gallon (8 lbs) of water in the process. 21 lbs of oxygen fills about four phone booths (~250 cu. ft.), and 19 lbs of carbon dioxide fills about two and a half phone booths (~150 cu. ft.). If your fuel economy is 25 mpg, then the above quantities occur every 25 miles you drive.
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