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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • atomicorange@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzDots!
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    9 days ago

    I did a little digging. The heat of decay (so plutonium 238 just sitting around, not burning) is about .48 kcal/hr per gram. So if we were able to convert that energy to ATP like we do carbohydrates, eating about 300g of plutonium would be like eating a twinkie (150kcal) every hour. In about 88 years the energy output of that plutonium would have reduced to about a half-twinkie per hour.

    Assuming you need 2000 kcal per day to maintain weight, that’s only 83 kcal per hour needed. So, if you could survive eating it and actually utilize the energy generated, you’d be set for life on food after eating less than 300g. We’d have to come up with a dosing schedule or you’d have to work out pretty hard as a young person to keep from getting fat.

    The heat of combustion for plutonium based on a very cursory search (take it with a grain of salt) is about 1 kcal/g. So assuming your body could oxidize it, you’d get a one-time burst of about 2 twinkies worth of energy immediately upon eating that 300g.




  • atomicorange@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzDots!
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    9 days ago

    Technically it measures how much you can heat up a known volume of water if you burn the food. We have no way of measuring how much of that energy released by combustion actually gets absorbed and translated to ATP in the body, but it’s the best estimation we have of the relative energy content of foods.

    There’s some carbohydrates, proteins, and fats that our bodies don’t seem to convert to energy (or only partially convert) but still technically contain “calories” because they’re combustible. Sugar alcohols, fiber, etc.

    Plutonium doesn’t combust, but it would heat up water in a calorimeter. Really the test method’s applicability kind of falls apart when you start testing undigestible materials.















  • I like how you have it set up! Leaving yourself room to expand is smart!

    If you find you’re struggling with long walk times, think about planning your prison with the inmates’ schedule in mind. So if they wake up, shower, then eat, then work you might want to plan your prison with those facilities laid out roughly in that order so nobody has to backtrack and waste time.

    You can also have multiple cell blocks with duplicated facilities in each, so a little group of cells with their own showers and canteen etc. if you can plan a tiny efficient prisoner block with a balanced proportion of facilities, you can easily scale it up by just duplicating it over and over.