Physics Fun: How Many Elephants of Stuff Comes Out of the Tailpipe of Your Car?

We fill up our automobiles at the pump daily. Have you ever thought about how much of the stuff your car uses as fuel escapes from the tailpipe every year?  For a bit of fun, let's measure it in elephants per year.

Before we calculate this, we need to know a few conversion factors to help create our elephant equation:

• Gasoline weighs about 6 pounds (lbs) per gallon
• The weight of an elephant is about 10000 lbs per gallon

Now we can use the handy-dandy dimensional analysis we learned in our science classes to create a rough model that cancels out conversion factors. In the below equation q = Odometer reading in miles/week, and u = Mileage in miles/gallon.

? elephants = (q miles/1 week)*(1 gallon/u miles)*(6 lbs/1 gallon)*(1 elephant/10000 lbs)*(52 weeks/1 year)

This conversion factors simplify to a simple little equation: y =0.0312(q/u), where y is the number of elephants per year.

Let's try our model using U.S. national automobile averages.
q = 231 miles/week, u =23 MPG


y=0.0312(q/u) = 0.0312(231/23) = 0.31 elephants/year

So it turns out Americans have almost a third of an elephant of stuff popping out of their exhaust pipes every year on average. Want to calculate your own car's elephants quickly? Use my Elephant Tailpipe Calculator!
Elephant Tailpipe Calculator 1.0

The Persistent Cloud: Part I

The Persistent Cloud: Part I

by Andrew M. Samuels

Specialist Ethan Meyer walks outside his DRASH to take in the crisp clean air and head towards the mess for breakfast. The sun beams contently and focused. Nothing but clear skies if you ignore the lone cloud hovering in the distance moving towards Kandahar. Meyer occasionally did daily routines the old-fashioned way for nostalgia’s sake, he could have easily checked the weather on his Android mobile and synced it with his Packbot to bring him back some coffee. Admiring the generous weather, Ethan wished this was a vacation, but the resurgent Taliban seems to be attempting to put a damper on such fantasies.

Spc. Meyer’s squad set up their DRASH tent in about an hour as the rest of the company moved into the base set up just outside Kandahar.  NATO forces and the new Afghan military had Kandahar under control for several years until an uptick in violence had spiked as a result of the troop surge. Taliban forces retreated and regrouped to hold out in Kandahar.

It didn’t take a very extensive analysis to understand that the Taliban insurgency was planning. They’ve seen the efforts of the insurgency in Iraq and wished to inflict the same type of damage in an attempt to wear down NATO’s political will through brutal violence in an urban setting. The enemy will disguise themselves as civilians, hiding like cowards amongst the innocent. Scoffing at our efforts to root them out while the civilian populace is made to suffer by the insurgents as distractions and shields.

It has been a little more than a decade since the fall of Baghdad in 2003. People have said that the Second Gulf War was a hopeless effort that solved nothing. But Meyer knew better, and more so, the defense strategists, scientists, and engineers knew better. War had changed. It took a decade to find any measurable adaptation, but it came. A few suits at the top with scientific degrees and an itch for problem solving put in the order for billions of dollars worth of funds, not for new weaponry, but for innovative minds. And these minds literally decided to put their head up in the clouds.

The lone cloud parked itself high above the base. It looked so distant, yet looming. You knew it was thinking. When you looked up at it you wondered if your supposed reality was a tug-o-war between your own dream and the dream of the machine.  The brains at the Department of Defense research facilities dubbed it EPAC or Encrypted Persistent Airship Cloud.

When the public thinks of airships, they think of big burning crashing oh-the-humanity German zeppelins. If you rubbed your gym-socked feet against the carpet and touched the thing you would hear the “ka” and the “boom” walk hand in hand under the flames.

Airship design and engineering has evolved since your great grandma’s flapper days; in this case you didn’t have to worry about any souls lost on the ship because EPAC is unmanned. Controlled by some twenty-somethings in Nevada who had probably gotten their start in operating multi-million dollar aircraft on their Xbox 360. From the pictures Meyer had seen, they hardly had to leave their mom’s basement couch to operate EPAC. In fact, one of the pilots navigated the mechanical cloud with an Xbox controller.

Our parents tried to tell us those damn video games would get us nowhere. Now recruitment offices scouted new warfighters partly based on how many points a prospective recruit had racked up playing the Halo series on the Xbox Live network. Past gaming data starting at a time when it was still awkward to put your hands around the cute blond at the school dance. Courtesy of corporations that never disposed of years worth of data. And what was the need? Data storage was cheap. Cheaper than oil is these days. You could store mountains worth of data for peanuts.

The problem with all this data was never the storage.  Just because you had petabytes worth of data about your target demographic, it didn’t mean you knew what the hell to do with it or what the data even meant.  It wasn’t until the data was processed, organized, and interpreted that it actually became useful. Useful to a point where it separated your problems in real time before your eyes and placed them in cute little Tupperware containers for further inspection by the brains wearing boots.

This airship was built on imagination meeting application. It stood almost motionless, lofty, dreamy, it tried to fool you. At a high enough altitude where shooting projectiles at it with most conventional weapons would be pointless. Massive enough, where some will ogle at it, attempt to touch it like cats and yarn. EPAC housed an impressive array of sensors, communication devices, and parallel processing units inside its blank white hull. A supercomputer onboard that might convince you that it could learn. Maybe even think like you do.  But EPAC’s supercomputer doesn’t think like you do. It does better, but has a different purpose. By no means did it replace the need for the intelligence operative, it worked with her, synced with her. Defense engineers synced every piece of equipment with a sensor of some sort to the cloud. Drones, MRAPs, mobile phones, battlechips, packbots, even the cameras mounted on a soldier’s helmet; EPAC inhaled the torrent of sensor data served by the darknet, an encrypted network of information flow facilitated by the airship.

The influx of data from the Iraq War was like no other in history, and DoD jumped on the mountain and fielded its best and brightest to climb it, contemplate it, and build powerful clouds that could rain down bytes to consume the mountain.  No longer an obstacle, but an ally to the warfighter.  Well, at least that’s the idea.

EPAC is an idea. An idea conceived in the humility of those willing to learn from the past, and use technology to soak up the sea of knowledge that the past and present battlefield contains. Warfighters on the field weren’t quite ready for the torrential rain of information the persistent cloud would unleash. Specialist Ethan Meyer looks down at his blinking mobile phone, a reminder that the syncronization with EPAC would begin in fifteen minutes. Meyer thought he just heard thunder in the mostly cloudless sky.

Progeny of Sol: Act I - Screenplay

 Progeny of Sol: Act I

Written by Andrew Samuels

SOUND OF A VIOLIN, resonating, and fading out.

THE NIGHT SKY, comes into being from blackness, revealing a star studded sky with twin moons.

JASON (V.O.)

Looks clear tonight. So are we on?

Camera pans down, away from the night sky, onto the barren rocky countryside, looking over a cliff.

CUT TO:

EXT. MOUNTAINOUS CLIFFSIDE - NIGHT

Jason Canis, a short, stocky, male with buzzed hair. Early twenties in age. Still very young, and hopeful. Heads Up Display (HUD) goggles rest on his forehead. He has the demeanor of the most curious toddler. Ready for the next adventure.

Jason finishes peering up at the night sky, looks over at Kristen, not quite sure if she heard him.

Kristen Oort, comparatively tall, slim build, long dark hair, and cosmetically tan skin. At age 21, she, like Jason, is just beginning her life. Curious, yet very focused on finding an answer.

Kristen, sitting Indian style in the dusty terrain, never looks up at Jason to respond, her eyes fixed on the pod that bore the weight of the telescope.

KRISTEN

Mmhmm...Geez, how do you fix this sun-forsaken thing? Oh, never mind, got it. Wait, what were you saying? Oh, yeah, definitely. The others should be on their way.

A LOW HUM and slight annoying whine with the sound of crackling pebbles and rocks increasing from behind, bright xenon light infiltrates the position of Jason and Kristen's setup.

BRI

Hi-ya, fellas!

Bri Sagan, a short, dirty blond haired girl in her late teens, steps off her electric unicycle and powers it off. The low hum disappears immediately, but the annoying whine lingered until the gyroscope in her unicycle stopped spinning.
Jason, with an even more curious look on his face, approaches Bri and her unicycle with astonishment.

JASON

What? Where the hell did you get one of those?

Jason nodded towards the electric unicycle as Bri kicked the stands in place. She beamed ear to ear at Jason and Kristen.

Kristen, finally looks away from the telescope, and peers at Bri with half envy and half amazement.

KRISTEN

Gotta be one of the perks of being the Colony Chief of Engineering's daughter.

BRI

(chuckling and kicking the dirt and pebbles with her boots)

Well...actually, I'm just sort of borrowing it from transport storage for a little while. Haven't even had the chance to ask dear old Dad if he had any stellar rides to spare.

JASON

(pointing a finger up)

Ah, so you stole it. Might I inquire how exactly?

Bri anticipated this response and had an excellent bullshit rebuttal ready.

BRI

Long story buddy, but you know, stealing is a bit harsh of a word. I am merely taking it upon myself as this unicycle's new custodian. Besides, how's a little gal like me supposed to lug all of this equipment over here on foot?

Kristen, now relieved to have fixed the telescope pod, interjected into the conversation with her hands on her hips.

KRISTEN

You just wait till the Colony Council finds out. They just might shut our little science project down for breaking the rules. Did you think of that missy?

Bri scoffed, and unpacked her computing equipment out of the titanium box cabled to the back of her unicycle.

BRI

Hah, well friends, this is science and in science, rules are meant to be broken.  The Council is full of old farts in their 400s who still remember what it's like to power things with dead plants and animals.  Once we find Sol, the Council will have no choice but to commend us. We'll be the heroes of the colony.

JASON

Yes! What are we waiting for? Let's get started already!

KRISTEN

I hope your right Bri, but the truth is we haven't found Sol, and hardly even know where to start.  Not even the Elders know where mankind's first solar system was and two of them have been alive for almost 600 years.

BRI

That's why Dr. Luna has agreed to help us. He can't make it tonight, but some of our other classmates should be...ah speak of the devils!

CUT TO

ACROSS the mountains where you can see distant lights from the Colony. Three other dark silhouettes, young people, wielding flash lamps walked side by side as they made their way toward the project site.

JASON

(shouting)

Nice of you to join us! Do you have the records?

DON

(Shouting back)

Of course, we weren't going to leave ya hanging.  Even though we are way past Level 1 curfew.

Don, Rachel, and Mike were much younger colony members in their preteens. Virtually newborns for Colony age standards.

Before Bri could make a smart remark about it being past their bedtime, Don handed the fingernail sized data chip to Bri.

BRI

    Stellar, lets boot this baby up.

Bri placed the data chip into her navicomputer and plugged in her HUD goggles to view the display screen.  The other group members joined in and connected their respective goggles to see exactly what Bri was looking at.

A Red light flashed on the visual display, indicating that the navicomputer was in connection with Colony's main artificial intelligence whom curiously named itself Mr. Giggle Pants.

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

Let me know if you will be needing any assistance.

BRI

Okay, thanks Giggle. Well, I guess I do have a question, based on the data I just put into my navicomputer, can you tell me a bit of what we know about Sol?

It was hardly even a second of crunching from the navicomputer and Mr. Giggle Pants had a response.

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

Sol is the hypothetical sun of the ancestors of all humanity and...

A long pause and silence, dotted with a few clicks from the navicomputer as it blinked its tiny lights happily.

BRI

(looking anticipating)

And? And what?

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

Apologies, all further non-fiction historical records and scientific data on Sol has been lost or corrupted. Please ask another question.

A RUSHING sound of wind blew past, and dust devils appeared in the clearing below the cliff.

Closeup of Kristen's face, she bites her lower lip with deep thought, and gets into the hunt for knowledge.

KRISTEN

Giggle, can you find information present in this data chip on fables, legends, or children's stories about Sol or mankind's beginning?

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

One-hundred and forty three items found. Suggestions: “When We First Set Sail”, “Homeworld”, “Little Johnny's Journey to the Outer Rim”, “Starry Night in Woodruff's Grove” “La Casa del Sol”, “Everybody Poops”

JASON

Hold on Giggle, why is “Everybody Poops” one of your suggestions? Isn't it relatively popular? I recall one the Colony's droid nannies reading it to me when I was three.

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

I thought it might be appropriate reading for you youngsters. But seriously, this is one of the most ancient of children's literature on Colony record.

BRI

But what does it have to do with Sol?

MR. GIGGLE PANTS

It is believed by some historians of legends to be written on the home planet of human ancestors in the Sol system.

The group goes silent for a moment. Their eyes and ears perk up at this new knowledge.

Bri smiled widely from ear to ear.

The excited young astronomers boot up the navigation system on the telescope and pour over the data  sorted by Mr. Giggle Pants.

BRI

(whispering under her breath)

We're going to find it. I know it.

CAMERA pans up, back to the starry night sky and twin moons, everything fades away into blackness.