Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
I actually believed the fallacy of everything working out equally by driving faster when I was younger.
I also believed the fallacy that it is more efficient to keep a house warm all day even when it isn't occupied than to turn the thermostat down when it isn't occupied. The misconception being that more fuel is required to bring the house up from such a cold temperature compared to the little amount of fuel required to maintain temperature.
Shortly after I held those incorrect beliefs, I took 9th grade physics.
|
Don't go discounting all of your early intuitive misconceptions, there is always more to the picture.
Thermal Mass is the key phrase here. Associated terms: passive solar, earth-shelter, adobe, radiant heat etc..........are all expressions or examples of this in action.
Your comfort level is determined by more than air temperature. The rate at which energy leaves and or enters your body greatly determines how cool or how warm we feel.
I have an older house with thick/mass lath and plaster walls and if I let all that mass heat up (
including furniture etc..), the A/C which I have at my disposal cannot catch up to the thermal flywheel already in motion - I'm screwed if I don't leave the A/C on all day on the hottest of days.
Think of the energy required to stop all that mass of a tractor trailer once it's moving, it's a different kind of energy but a much better visual to work with and it gets us back to our topic.
In Aeroheads example I think a safe conclusion is to avoid driving on windy days, at least into head winds. One action could be just to slow down on windy days, and I think the safest drivers already
do this out of an sense of self preservation.
As for the hay-bail guys, I'm not in their world and suppose that I really would not understand.
