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Energy amounts for 1 gram of water in various situations
You know it takes 1 calorie to raise 1 gram of water 1 degrees Celsius. Which of the following energy requirements suprises you the most?
it takes 80 calories
to melt one gram of ice (if it was at 0 degrees Celsius). This energy goes into
chemical energy.
It takes 539 calories to boil away a gram of water (if it was at 100 degrees Celsius).
(This is called the the heat of vaporization.)
It would take 21 calories to move 1 gram of water from sea level to the top of Mount Everest (this gives it potential energy).
It would take 13 calories
to accelerate one gram of water to the speed of sound (1087 feet per second
or 331.3 meters per second), assuming no air resistance.
This energy would be in the form of kinetic energy.
(This is faster than the fastest bullet).
It would take 14,983 calories
to accelerate 1 gram of water
to a velocity that could escape the earth's gravitational pull (25,000 miles per hour
or 11.2 kilometers per second). Can you imagine how much energy it takes to
get a large rocket off the earth?
81,000,000,000 (81 billion) calories would be released if 1 gram of deuterium-tritium fuel from a fusion reactor were to fuse. This is nuclear energy.
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