calories...

[tedcrum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

A comon error has been made, the same one made by the weight-loss people
who claim that you can lose weight by drinking cold water.

A physical calorie is the heat to raise a gram of water one celsius.

A dietary "calorie" is really a kilo-calorie; the heat to raise a kilogram
(litre) of water a celsius.

- -Ted Crum
 1980 735i 5-speed
 tedcrum@domain.elided

- -----------original message-----------
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 13:11:38 -0500
From: "Daniel Chenault" <danielc@domain.elided>
Subject: Re: The heat melts my car's performance!

To be more exact, it takes 118Kcals of heat to break the covalent
molecular
bonds of water in order to decompose it into separate atoms of hydrogen
and
oxygen.
More info at
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/jkimball/BiologyPages/B/BondEnergy.html

The environment inside the combustion chamber of an internal combustion
engine during ignition most emphatically does not produce anywhere near
118Kcal. One calorie is the amount of energy needed to heat one liter of
water by one degree Celsius; the energy needed to decompose water is
118,000
calories. And that is per mole which, for water, is 18 grams.

As far as internal combustion engines are concerned, you inject water, you
get water back out, usually in the form of steam.
- -----------------end original message-----------------

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