*Boo

(But having a book instead is always nice.)

which is bigger? TREE(3) vs

((...(1 room of stacked papers ) room of paper) room of paper)...)) room of paper

The number of brackets in above expression is, eh, ok, you got the idea.

/s

And this boulder could generate huge amounts of energy if I pushed it up to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and let it roll down.

44 upvotes and 0 downvotes for a comment that doesn't understand that energy density measurements like this tend to measure the useful energy of a system.

It's disappointing that natural selection didn't figure out fusion.

How much more energy would you get if you fused uranium?

Whilst I get your point, their point is still valid in the sense that you just can't extract that energy from gasoline in a more efficient manner than just burning it. For practical purposes, gasoline truly is that much less energy dense.

and all would generate the same if thrown to something capable of lossless e=mc^2 conversion (maybe a black hole)

For comparison:

• Chemical combustion of uranium: ~4.7 MJ/kg
• Nuclear fission of uranium-235: ~83.14 TJ/kg (or $ 83.14 \times 10^6 , \text{MJ/kg} $)

In theory, yes. In practice, of those two only fission is currently viable.

I think that's technically true regardless.

I was thinking the same thing. It's unfair compare chemical energy to nuclear energy. Coal still kind of sucks, but the hydrogen in the others could definitely be used in fusion...

This is the real big brain hack with decibels

you can use a linear scale, it's just that the units are logarithmic instead.

(Yes I know most people would call a dB axis logarithmic, it's just a silly comment.)