User talk:Dave1g

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[edit] Your edit to Chlorella

Thanks for taking the time to standardize the use of "%" or "percent" in the Chlorella article. KP Botany 06:54, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome message

Probably because I was sending it to someone else, and put it on your page by mistake--I was pretty sure I shouldn't be welcoming the %-guy. I wanted to ask you a question, also. Maybe I asked the other person the question, instead. Oh, yeah. Is there any place on Wikipedia that lists whether to use symbols or words in cases like this? You did not seem to know according to the edit history you submitted with the changes, but is this because you looked and could not find, or because there is no standardization that you know of? KP Botany 04:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is in desperate need of a detail librarian. It's so disorganized in this respect, though. I try to personally acknowledge everyone I come across on Wikipedia who takes the time to tend to details like this, though, changing %/percent, or the guy on my talk page before you who is obsessively changing "physical description" to just "description" on all the organism articles. Sometimes I read a handful of articles in a row and it goes well from one article to the next. This is almost always because they are a group of articles that have been attended to by detail folks.
I think picking one style guide and going with it would have been a good idea, or even one style guided for each broad area, like science articles versus arts versus literature. KP Botany 16:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UAV list

Re: your comment about there should be a list...look in the article under the section titled "UAV models". Akradecki 15:46, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chloroplasts and animals

That is a totally cool article you linked on Solar Powered Sea Slugs.

I think the main problem animals would have with solar power is the surface area to volume ratio of their bodies. Plants have thin leaves with a large surface area which allows them to collect a lot of sunlight relative to their body mass. Animals do not have this body shape - but the sea slug in that article did - which seems to fit my hyphothesis.

Ttguy 21:58, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


Even if the surface area wasn't enough to power the animal indefinitely, wouldn't it still be advantageous? surely it would extend the length without food before dying. --Dave1g 05:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
I guess so. It would cut down the amount of food an animal would need to eat in order to fuel itself. I guess the question would be - by what fraction? Eg would it decrease its food requirments by 50%, 10%, 1%, 0.1%. It may be that because of the surface area issue that the impact would be very low. You would have to get some smart dude to perform a few calculations to answer this :-) Ttguy 02:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

well straight off u move a trophic level or two in terms of energy conservation, so depending on where the animal is in the trophic levels you could have a ten fold to even thousand fold savings in energy, as the light energy conversion is inefficient after going around the food web, on the other side would be some sort of mass-to number of effective chloroplasts ratio, apparently counterbalancing that the other direction as of this surface area issue. Of course a major benefit is possibly sustaining survival in conditions when food is scarce, even if it may be at a lower level of energy for the animal to work with to do all the things its organism needs to do, and possibly needing to reduce its activity level...in any case, it seems to me if animals photosynthsized the ecosystems could likely contain more animal biomass, more plant biomass, or some combination of both...perhaps extra premium nutrients would be added as well into the cycles further enhancing animals higher up the food web, perhaps other factors may reduce or limit this somewhat from a pure calculation just based on the energy savings, then there is the extra exposure to possibly harmful electromagnetic radiation from possible extra time spent in direct sunlight that may have to be adapted to...if the creatures had adapted it long ago, and with a lucky roll of the dice for them and their genetics, they could have later adapted out into all the highly evolved animals, and the large animals would all be photosynthetic today, it didnt happen that way though, yet at least here on planet earth, its very possible the humans will ensure at least some additional animals photosynthesize-PolyhymniasPeripheralPerceptions 02:10, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


Well I tried some pack of the envelope calculations and here is what I came up with, I must be wrong somewhere.

175-300 watts per meter^2

175 joules = 41.8260038 calories - google calculator

175 watts ~ 50 calories / second - change units and aproximate

6% photosythetic efficiency

50 * .06 = 3 cal/sec/m^2

roughly approximating my surface area as 5 cylinders. arms, legs, torso, and one sphere head.

surface: cylinder 2 pi r (r + h) sphere 4 pi r^2

im 5'7" 2 arms - 3 in diamter x 24 in long = r = 1.5 h= 24

2 pi 1.5 ( 1.5 + 24 )

240 sq in x 2 arms

1 torso 36 in around x 24 in tall r = 16/pi h = 24

2 pi 16/pi ( 16/pi + 24)

930 sq in

2 leg 15 in around x 32in long r = 7.5/pi h = 32

2 pi 7.5/pi (7.5/pi + 32 )

515 sq in x 2 legs

1 head 17 in around r = 17/2pi

4 pi (17/2pi)^2

91 sq in

91+515*2+930 + 240*2 = 2531 sq in

1 (sq in) = 0.00064516 meters squared - google calc

2531 sqin = 1.6 m^2

3 cal / sec /m^2 * 1.6 m^2 = 4.9 calories per second

4.9 cal / second * 8 hours of good sun * 3600 second/hour = 28,800 seconds * 4.9 calories / second = 141,000 calories per day

141k /2 for double counting the ends of the cylinders = 70,000 calories per day

That doesnt seem right... --dave1g (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)