“Ice Ice Baby”

 

Mark and I have camped through our first historic ice storm, in a small aluminum trailer, and we’ve learned some things about thermal dynamics and each other.

First of all, freezing rain likes metal so our trailer has become a virtual igloo the last few days but we have managed to stay warm inside. Little did I realize how much I’d have Mark to thank for that.

In the movie The Matrix, intelligent machines are exploiting humans as a power source harvesting their thermal energy and converting it to electricity. One of the main characters, Morpheus, tells Neo that human beings produce 25,000 BTU’s (British Thermal Units) of body heat an hour. Humans actually only produce about 356 BTU’s. If 356 BTU’s  are converted into watts the number is about 120 watts. That’s quite a lot when you realize a small electric heater only puts out about 750 watts. It seems the larger the human and the more calories they consume, the more heat they produce.

After almost forty years of marriage, public displays of affection are almost nonexistent for Mark and me but three days in an “igloo” have made me appreciate cozying up to my much larger power unit!