How Many Homes Could You Power With Free Doughnuts?
science
Should you get a COVID vaccine? Yes, it will protect you AND protect others to help us move past this pandemic so we can get back to a more normal life. But wait! If you get vaccinated, you can also get a doughnut! At least that's the deal that Krispy Kreme Doughnuts is offering. Once you get your vaccine, you get a doughnut. Oh, it's not just one doughnut—it's one doughnut every day. That's a lot of doughnuts. OK, so how about some physics estimations to go along with your tasty doughnut? Let's say that all the Americans that have a COVID vaccine get (and eat) one doughnut a day. Of course eating food gives you energy to do stuff—that's how food works. So, suppose that all these humans eat their doughnut and then use the extra energy to peddle a stationary bike. All of these bikes are then connected to generators so that they feed into the power grid. What kind of power output would this produce? The first thing we need is the number of doughnuts a day. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) 63 million Americans have been fully vaccinated so far (as of April 7 2021). Oh, don't worry too much about the numbers—I'm going to do all my calculations in python so t...
Wired
Apr 13, 2021
