Winter Wonderland

[jducoeur]

Most of the time, having a house (and yard) five feet above street level is very convenient. For example, flooding is never an issue.

Today is not one of those times.

So -- anyone have a convenient chart that gives calories expended per ton of snow lifted per number of feet?

-- Justin
Who needs the gym?

Comments

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

Well, a joule is 0.7375 foot-pounds and a calorie is 4.186 joules, and you're interested in big-C Calories which are actually kilocalories...

A ton of snow lifted one foot (I'll ignore the energy expended holding the snow up while moving it laterally because I'm not sure how to figure that off the top of my head) would be 2000 foot-pounds, which is 2712 joules, which is 648 cal, or 0.6 Cal. Wait, wait, that sounds so terribly wrong ... either I've seriously botched the arithmatic or nearly all of the Calorie-burning comes from carrying the snow rather than lifting it.

Oh bother, I've gone and confused myself now. I'll post this anyhow in hope that somebody more awake than I am (really, I didn't sleep well) corrects it.

[tpau]

well, we all know that doing lots of excersise actually burns very few calories. all my times on the stairmaster have tought me that...

A fast check with search engines

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

shows about 400 calories per hour. Naturally, no one agrees with anyone else.
This was the cutest web-page on the topic: http://www.primusweb.com/fitnesspartner/library/activity/holicals.htm