# Hot Banana # # I heard that bananas are radioactive. If they are radioactive, then # they radiate energy. How many bananas would you need to power a house? # # https://what-if.xkcd.com/158/ # Bananas contain Potassium-40 with the following properties: let halflife: Time = 1.25 billion years let molar_mass: MolarMass = 40 g / mol # 40-K has a natural occcurence of let occurrence_40K = 0.0117% # We can now compute the radioactivity of natural potassium let decay_rate: Activity = ln(2) / halflife let radioactivity: Activity / Mass = N_A × occurrence_40K × decay_rate / molar_mass -> Bq / g print("Radioactivity of potassium: {radioactivity}") # Next, we come to bananas @aliases(bananas) unit banana # https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/173944/nutrients let potassium_per_banana = 451 mg / banana let radioactivity_banana: Activity / Banana = potassium_per_banana × radioactivity -> Bq / banana print("Radioactivity of a banana: {radioactivity_banana}") # A single 40-K decay releases an energy of # (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Potassium-40-decay-scheme.svg) let energy_per_decay: Energy = 11 percent × 1.5 MeV + 89 percent × 1.3 MeV # Finally: how many bananas do we need to power a single household? let power_per_banana: Power / Banana = radioactivity_banana × energy_per_decay -> pW / banana print("Power per banana: {power_per_banana}") unit household let power_consumption_household: Power / Household = 3000 kWh per household per year let bananas_per_household = power_consumption_household / power_per_banana -> bananas / household print("Bananas per household: {bananas_per_household}") # TODO: https://what-if.xkcd.com/158/ says this number should be around # 300 quadrillion, but we only get 0.1 quadrillion. 300 quadrillion # times "a couple of picowatt" would be an average power consumption of # at least 300 kW / household, which seems … excessive.