Yabba-dabba-doo!

Coming back to Michigan means going to the gym again! I'm always interested in the energy measurements given by the machines – Calories are a unit of energy, but with a capital "C", they're actually kilocalories, with a lowercase "c". Here's a 30-minute workout on the elliptical:

This says I burned 268 Calories to go 2.43 miles, or 0.009 miles/Calorie.

A few years ago, my parents got the all-electric Chevy Bolt, which also shows the energy used to go a distance, and so I was curious to see how I stack up to their car in terms of efficiency. I asked Sally to send me a photo of one of the status screens:

The number we're interested in is the 3.0 miles/kilowatt-hour. Kilowatt-hour is another unusual measurement of energy, since Watts are energy per time (specifically Joules per second) which we multiply by a time to get back to energy.

To compare these two, we can convert the units to match: 0.009 miles/Calorie = 7.74 miles/kWh, meaning running on an elliptical is 2.58 times as efficient as a modern electric car! You might be thinking a new charging method is in order...

Giphy

...unfortunately, the energy demands of hauling a car around are a bit higher than your own body, as shown by another status screen:

The total energy of 22.4 kWh comes to almost 20,000 Calories, which I don't think is in the range of many humans!