I hear the voice of B.A. Baracus when I repeat the title of this post in my head.
Our Universe is a quirky place (much quirkier and more interesting than your local psychic or astrologer make it out to be, but that's a conversation for another day). One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is the fact that energy can be neither created nor destroyed by any process.
Oh sure, we can move energy around with chemical, mechanical, electrical, physical, or nuclear processes but rest assured we cannot create any new energy from these processes. Burning a piece of firewood is a good example of a chemical energy conversion. By igniting a piece of wood, you are starting a chain of events that lead to a chemical reaction known as combustion. Combustion combines the hydrocarbons in wood with oxygen from the air; a reaction which outputs heat, light, and several elements (carbon, very little nitrogen, etc...)
Our Universe is a quirky place (much quirkier and more interesting than your local psychic or astrologer make it out to be, but that's a conversation for another day). One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is the fact that energy can be neither created nor destroyed by any process.
Oh sure, we can move energy around with chemical, mechanical, electrical, physical, or nuclear processes but rest assured we cannot create any new energy from these processes. Burning a piece of firewood is a good example of a chemical energy conversion. By igniting a piece of wood, you are starting a chain of events that lead to a chemical reaction known as combustion. Combustion combines the hydrocarbons in wood with oxygen from the air; a reaction which outputs heat, light, and several elements (carbon, very little nitrogen, etc...)
Believe it or not, computers function as basic energy converters. More specifically the processor in your desktop, mobile phone, car, or about a gadzillion other electronic devices convert electrical energy into something useful like a photo of your dog. As a matter of fact, the more you push your processor to do something useful, the more energy it needs. This fact is easily demonstrated by a computer attached to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).
The job of a UPS is to maintain power to a device even if the source of electricity stops working. By attaching a computer to a UPS, you are able to keep using the computer even if the power goes out in your home for a few minutes. Most newer UPSs allow you to track the amount of power your computer is consuming and how much run time you have left. Run time is a measurement of how long the UPS will last in the case of a power outage and goes down when more power is being consumed by the computer.
The graphs posted below depict me forcing my computer to do some real work (encoding a home movie in x264 using 8 threads). All of a sudden, when the work (encoding) begins, the run time of the UPS drops from 14 minutes to 9 minutes and the UPS load goes up from 25% to 40%!
Basically, the processors in my computer are converting a home movie from one format to another by converting energy into work!
Neato mosquito!
