26 ms·
Airplanes don't flap their their wings, but they are also orders of magnitude less energy efficient than birds. If you want computational power on the scale of
by skummetmaelk 9y ago
Airplanes don't flap their their wings, but they are also orders of magnitude less energy efficient than birds.
If you want computational power on the scale of the brain, power consumption is a real concern.
- Houshalter 9y agoAre planes less energy efficient than birds? Sure they consume more energy, but they can lift many orders of magnitude more weight. To carry that much weight, that much distance, you would need an unfathomable number of birds. Flying for a very long time. The same with with brains. As far as I can tell, transistors are orders of magnitude more energy efficient than synapses. Synapses use tons of slow chemical reactions to send a signal. Transistors just send a few electrons near light speed.
- skummetmaelk 9y agoBirds are more efficient in terms of energy expended to move the same mass the same distance as a plane. Transistors are not more efficient than synapses. Neurons and transistors in subthreshold transport charge in the same way, through diffusion. Neurons just have a more efficient structure leading to less energy expenditure for an equivalent amount of information processing as the transistor. If you operate your transistor above threshold as done in all digital circuits, you are orders of magnitude less efficient.
- i_cant_speel 9y agoPlanes also travel 500-600 MPH while birds fly, maybe 30-50 MPH? I don't know what point you are trying to make with that comment. If it was more energy efficient for planes to flap their wings, they would be doing it right now.
- skummetmaelk 9y agoI think you are conflating utility for humans and cost efficiency with energy efficiency. There is no question that birds are more energy efficient than planes in terms of energy expended to move the same mass the same distance. However, humans would prefer to spend large amounts of energy by burning fuel to cross the Atlantic in 6 hours. It is much more COST efficient, but that is because energy is cheap.
- dragandj 9y agoYet, no one tries to travel across the continent in an armchair tied to a flock of those energy efficient birds.
- skummetmaelk 9y agoGood job on the hyperbole. They don't because fast airplanes have more utility to us as humans. You of course have to consider what you are measuring. Birds have a very low speed, but they are more energy efficient in terms of mass times distance travelled per energy.
- varjag 9y agoA rubber band driven toy plane wound by a child can fly for minutes. I'm not sure birds expend orders of magnitude less energy than that.