The energetic cat

seanie · Post by **seanie** » 18 Feb 2010, 01:36

admin: split from Proposed waste depot in Portobello thread.

It's incredible the information available on the internet.

Yet it's suprisingly difficult to find figures for the heat output of cats.

The only thing I could find was this, which suggests a cat at rest has an output of around 8 watts, and active around 20 watts. That doesn't seem unresonable since the average output of a human is frequently given as 100 watts.

But even assuming that the higher figure of a 20 watt output is an underestimate, that's difficult to square with the 9000 watts (9kW)suggested previously.

I'm not even sure that setting the cat on fire would increase it's kW output by a factor of 450.

Maria · Post by **Maria** » 18 Feb 2010, 13:06

But Seanie, cats have long been recognised as a valuable source of energy.

Pal of Porty · Post by **Pal of Porty** » 18 Feb 2010, 16:15

Boom Boom!

Grunk · Post by **Grunk** » 19 Feb 2010, 17:10

So the total Energy in a cat that weighs 4kg (<a href="http://www.petsgetslim.co.uk/site-media ... eights.pdf"> from here</a>) Can be given by:

E=MC^2

Which gives 3.6(EXP) 17 Joules.

Given that 1 Watt is 1 Joule per Second, a single cat could provide 9KW of power for 4(exp)13 seconds.

or: 1.26 million years

SoupDragon · Post by **SoupDragon** » 19 Feb 2010, 20:45

Anyone who as a cat knows they ABSORB rather than generate energy.
Give it some food, it goes to sleep.
Give it a source of heat ie a shaft of sun through a window, a radiator, a fire or human lap, it goes to sleep.
The energy goes in but is not expended in chasing balls, long walks on the beach or retrieving sticks.
I would postulate that using cats would drain energy from the surrounding area.

SoupDragon · Post by **SoupDragon** » 19 Feb 2010, 20:52

Of course Terry Pratchett in the book the Unadulterated Cat, put forward the theory that cats can slip through to last Wednesday to get an extra meal or two.
That may take a fair bit of energy, so if the Viridor plant was on the other side of that space time continuum and put out a tasty dish of tuna...

seanie · Post by **seanie** » 19 Feb 2010, 21:03

And have we ascertained the eigenstate of the cat?

If it's the one in the box it might be dead.

SoupDragon · Post by **SoupDragon** » 20 Feb 2010, 00:59

Or it could be alive.

I'm going to call it Heisenberg as I'm uncertain.

seanie · Post by **seanie** » 20 Feb 2010, 01:02

Either way the RSPCA aren't likely to be happy.