• state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    7 days ago

    Is that true, though? Your body needs energy for various tasks and those have different mechanisms of spending the energy. Muscles, for example, move, which creates heat. But that heat is not simply breathed out.

    • Enkrod@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 days ago

      The heat is literally produced by oxidizing (burning) carbon that you then breathe out as carbondioxide.

    • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 days ago

      Producing heat isn’t where the mass goes though - mass is conserved. You only lose mass to energy in a nuclear reaction.

        • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          I’m not sure what you mean by in there but yes, the heat would be transferred to the environment.

          E=m(c^2) describes how much energy is contained in matter. It’s useful for nuclear reactions, but your body isn’t a nuclear reactor and you aren’t consuming substantial quantities of radioactive isotopes, like uranium ore, that will decay on their own so it isn’t relevant here.

            • cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              2 days ago

              Radiation of heat is done through em waves which are massless particles. Being in direct contact with the air will transfer heat via conduction, or particles vibrating against each other - which is how the vast majority of heat loss will occur.