Oliver_de_jesus
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Is it possible to calculate the energy generated by the brain waves of 11,000 million people?
- Thread starter Oliver_de_jesus
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- absorption brains calcs
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Probably not, but I can give you some rough estimates.
The human brain supposedly uses 400-500 kcal a day on average. 450 kcal is 1882800 Joules or 21.8 Joules per second. 11 billion (I’m using the short scale) people would therefore be using 2.398e+11 Joules per second on average to maintain brain function (a bit higher at day, even higher when performing strenuous mental activity, a bit lower at night). I don’t know how much of that goes into firing action potential, and how much goes into other maintenance, but this would make sense as a potential upper limit.
Another estimate I can give:
Action potentials fire when the voltage of the neuron is -55mV. Resting voltage is -70mV, that’s a 15mV change. We have about 86 billion neurons on average, and 10% are active enough to be monitored at any given time. Action potentials supposedly take a few thousandths of a second in neurons, and have an amperage around 1 nanoamp, so 1e-9 A*15mV*0.003s is 4.5e-14 Joules, with 8.6 billion neurons, that’s 0.000387 Joules. Now, in a second, these active neurons fire 10-100 times, so taking 55 as average, that’s 0.021285 Joules/s. Multiply this by 11 billion people, and we’re getting 234135000 Joules of brainwaves per second (9-A).
The second estimate’s probably more accurate, but I’m unsure if either is good enough to use.
The human brain supposedly uses 400-500 kcal a day on average. 450 kcal is 1882800 Joules or 21.8 Joules per second. 11 billion (I’m using the short scale) people would therefore be using 2.398e+11 Joules per second on average to maintain brain function (a bit higher at day, even higher when performing strenuous mental activity, a bit lower at night). I don’t know how much of that goes into firing action potential, and how much goes into other maintenance, but this would make sense as a potential upper limit.
Another estimate I can give:
Action potentials fire when the voltage of the neuron is -55mV. Resting voltage is -70mV, that’s a 15mV change. We have about 86 billion neurons on average, and 10% are active enough to be monitored at any given time. Action potentials supposedly take a few thousandths of a second in neurons, and have an amperage around 1 nanoamp, so 1e-9 A*15mV*0.003s is 4.5e-14 Joules, with 8.6 billion neurons, that’s 0.000387 Joules. Now, in a second, these active neurons fire 10-100 times, so taking 55 as average, that’s 0.021285 Joules/s. Multiply this by 11 billion people, and we’re getting 234135000 Joules of brainwaves per second (9-A).
The second estimate’s probably more accurate, but I’m unsure if either is good enough to use.
Oliver_de_jesus
He/Him- 24,532
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- Thread starter
- #3
mmmm thanks for you time
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