A year in numbers

• Finally figured out how to make sense of days of the week and dates of the month
• Slept: 106 days
• Saw 70 movies in the cinema [for the price of 36 films, thank you Cineworld Unlimited Card]
• Watched 650 episodes of TV shows (averaging 2 a night, with the exceptions of holidays)
• Drank 500 l of water, 100 l juice, and ate 600 slices of bread
• Trained: 45-50 days [The mode is ~1 day a week or so, but my diligence suffered while I was in China, Estonia and Australia]
• Read 22 books [A serious drop from previous years, I blame the parents and TV for rotting my brain]
• 3 weeks typing
• Walked more than 350 hours [1050 miles, Dublin, Ireland to Pisa, Italy
• My heart has beaten ~27,288,000 times [My resting heart rate is some 45 bpm or so, 35 if I really concentrate. While training it probably averages 100 bpm, between the heavy stuff and the more sedate breathing exercises]
• Were I a car I would have travelled 9,336 km:

~6,221,000 breaths in a year {12 (breaths/min) x 60 (min/hour) x 24 (hour/day) x 360 (day/y)}
12,442,000 l-air/y {5,200,000 (breath/y) x 2 (l/breath)}
Inhale 508,000 mole-air/y {12,442,000 (l-air/y) / 24.5 (l/mol)}... Ideal Gas Law*
Consumed 35,560 mole-oxygen/y {508,000 x (0.21 - o.14**) } [Assuming I am a fit person]
This burns 2,845 mole-petrol/y {12.5O₂ + C₈H₁₈ > 8CO₂ + 9H₂O... 12.5 x Oxygen:Petrol}
I would have driven 9,336 km {2,845 (mole-petrol) / 114 (g-petrol/mole) = 324.3 g-petrol, 324.3 (g-petrol) / 0.74 (kg-petrol/l) = 438.3 l-petrol, 438.3 (l-petrol) x 21.3 (km/l, equivalent to 50 mpg) = 9,336 km}

I was going to do how much heat I radiated, but the numbers were provided better than I could have done here. Their lung capacity calculations are not as good, I think, not that anything I did up here was original work.
Speaking of which, the above method is just back-of-the-envelope stuff [the wiki on this phrase fills me with shame, considering the big wigs that first used it, plus I want this pamphlet "Modern Physics from an Elementary Point of View"!]. In my travels on the interweb I came across this site, which goes through the process from cell respiration POV.
The "distance" travelled is very sensitive to the mpg chosen, but nearly a quarter of the way around the earth is not bad :)

*Obviously I assumed the fugacity of the gases in question are ~ 1, which is reasonable at 1 atm and the moderate temperatures involved i.e. an ideal situation:


**The url I got the oxygen composition from seems to be on a dry basis, which makes things simple. For every volume of oxygen consumed, 1 volume carbon dioxide and and 1 volume of water is produced. On a dry basis there is no change in volumes. On a wet basis things change, for x oxygen converted:
***More rigourous ways to get the data would be the either: monitor oxygen consumption (tricky); or calorie intake (simple but exhaustive) and monitor change in body weight, taking into consideration percentage body fat change. We get a partial of a material/energy balance [a complete one would involve... guh... noting all ins and outs]. From that we back out an equivalent intake of oxygen, and other such things.