This post has nothing to do with IT,
just happened to have been a curiosity conjured during my travels up North and
back down South on various IT projects.
Hypothesis
The Earth is not a perfect sphere, it
is a spheroid that bulges out at the equator – the Earth's
equatorial radius is greater than the Earth's polar radius. From
high-school physics we know that Potential
Energy = mass
x gravity
x height
and so it follows that we might expect the potential
energy of an object on the Earth's surface (sea-level) at the
equator, to be greater than the potential energy of an object on the
Earth's surface closer to the poles, since we can think of sea-level
at the equator as being higher (further away from the Earth's
core/center of mass) than sea-level close to the poles.
Application of the Hypothesis
If I travel from London to Glasgow
achieving an MPG of 50 (Diesel),
by how much would I expect the MPG to be affected on the drive back
from Glasgow to London (because of the need to burn more fuel to
acquire the additional potential energy)?
This application is based on a complete
fantasy scenario where there are no traffic problems, the road is
upon a perfectly flat spheroidal Earth (it could be argued that even
with undulations in the carriageway, would still need to acquire more
potential energy on the drive to London,) and I travel from sea-level
in London to sea-level in Glasgow, and is really more of a
mathematical exercise that attempts to calculate if there would be
any noticeable difference. Apologies in advance for any flaws in the calculations!
The Mathematics
An old copy of Maple 7 was used for
the calculations, and some of the lines below in red represent the Maple
Execution Group Inputs with some formulas in blue.
Constants:
Latitudes in degrees North:
GlasgowLatitude:=55.8700;
LondonLatitude:=51.5171;
The Earth's equatorial radius a
and polar radius b in metres:
a,b:=6378137,6356752;
Mass of the automobile in kg:
mass:=1000;
Calorific value of diesel in J/kg:
45'300'000
Density of petroleum diesel in kg/l:
0.832
Litres in a UK gallon:
4.54609188
Distance London to Glasgow in miles:
405.1
Formulas:
Radians
as a function of Degrees:
Radians:=Degrees->Degrees*Pi/180;
Earth's
gravity (in ms-2) as a function of Radians:
Gravity:=phi->9.780327*(1+0.0053024*sin(sin(phi))-0.0000058*sin(sin(2*phi)));
Radius (in metres) at a given
geodetic Latitude as a function of Radians (or distance from the
Earth's center to a point on the spheroid surface):
f:=phi->sqrt(
( (a^2*cos(phi))^2 + (b^2*sin(phi))^2 ) / ( (a*cos(phi))^2 +
(b*sin(phi))^2 ) );
PotentialEnergy
in Joules with mass (in kg) gravity (in ms-2) and height
(in m):
PotentialEnergy:=mass*gravity*height
The
Calculations:
GlasgowLatitudeRadians
= 0.9751154533
LondonLatitudeRadians
= 0.8991430162
GlasgowGravity
= 9.818471842 ms-2
LondonGravity
= 9.816854446 ms-2
*Notice
that the gravity in Glasgow worked out as very slightly stronger!
GlasgowRadius
= 6363522.841 m
LondonRadius =
6365075.641 m
And
Potential Energy for the 1000kg automobile:
GlasgowPotentialEnergy
= 62480069830 J
LondonPotentialEnergy
= 62485021110 J
And
the potential energy difference for LondonPE minus GlasgowPE:
PEDifference =
62485021110 - 62480069830 = 4951280 J
Kilos
of diesel required:
KilosOfDiesel
= 4951280 / 45300000 = 0.1092997793
Litres
of diesel required:
LitresOfDiesel
= KilosOfDiesel / 0.832 = 0.1313699271
Gallons
of diesel required:
GallonsOfDiesel
= LitresOfDiesel / 4.54609188 = 0.02889733216
The Result:
A journey from London to Glasgow of 405.1 miles
at 50 MPG uses:
GallonsToGlasgow
= 405.1/50 = 8.102
To
get back to London requires an additional 0.02889733216 gallons of
diesel making the MPG:
MPGtoLondon =
405.1/(8.102+0.02889733216)
= 49.82229924
Conclusion
The
difference would be barely noticeable!
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