The Power Of a Gummy Bear

                   

                       This is a video of my teacher demonstrating the oxidation of a gummy bear.
   


   In one normal sized gummy bear there is approximately 7 to 10 calories. Now, think, all that light and heat and energy from ten calories! Think, the average human being needs to consume about 2000 calories a day to carry out its functions. Imagine the reaction you just witnessed and all its heat and light and energy multiplied 200 times! Well, that's the amount of energy our body creates every day. The difference is, like my teacher would go on later to explain, that cells go through this decomposition reaction in steps, taking in small amounts of energy at each step and converting it into usable ATP. What you witnessed was all the energy of the gummy bear being released at once. However, if our body did that then there would be deadly consequences as the energy would completely obliterate us. That's why we release the energy in steps, to conserve energy, and to obtain energy in a safe manner.

  There is approximately 4.2 Joules (measure of energy) in a single calorie. In 2000 calories there is about 8,350 joules. A watt (unit of power) is equal to one Joule per second. So, if one had a 100 watt light bulb, one could assume that it would use 100 Joules per second. Because there are 3600 seconds in one hour that would mean that it takes about 360,000 Joules to power a 100 watt light bulb for one our. If we think back about how there are around 4.2 Joules per calorie we can predict that it takes about 85,700 calories to power a 100 watt bulb for one hour. 85,700 calories is little more than a month's worth of calories for the average human being. If we put all this together that would mean that the energy that a human being needs to survive for a little more than a month, would power a 100 watt bulb for no more than an hour. Put that in perspective.