Twinkies

An interesting question: how do we convert energy into Twinkies?

Calories into Joules

Reference

"The calorie, is defined as the amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gm of water 1 C°."

The "calorie" commonly used in measuring food energy is actually the kilocalorie, or Kcal for short. Thermodynamic measurements tell us that one calorie = 4.186 joule.

One Kcal = 1000 cal = 4168 joules.

So, for example, a Hostess Twinkie with 200 calories contains 200 X 4168 = 833,600 joules

Energy in a Twinkie

Reference

One piece is 135 kcal, weighing 1.4oz (39.689g):

135 * 4186 = 562,680 joules of energy

Dimension of a Twinkie

Dimensions:

• Width: 1.1 inch (2.794 cm)
• Length: 3.9 inch (9.906 cm)
• Depth: 1.5 inch (3.81 cm)

Volume (m3) W x L x H

0.02794 . 0.09906 . 0.0381 = 0.000105451 m3

Energy per volume (joules/m3)

One Twinkie contains 562680 joules in a volume of 0.000105451 m3

So we can see that 9483 Twinkies fill 1 m3 and that that 1 m3 contains 5,335,938,018 joules of energy

Size/Weight of Twinkie for given energy in Joules

Next question is, how do we for a given energy in joules scale the Twinkie to the corresponding size? Doing this algerbraically will involve calculus. There are two simple options however:

• cube-root volume for an evenly sized object: 0.000105451 m3 = 0.047244388721775 m per side (4.7 cm per side)
• Next simplest is to brute force with spreadsheet.

Full size

Download: Excel Spreadsheet

This gives us the a reasonable order of magnitude figure to use when comparing energy to size of Twinkie.

Useful links

Convert large numbers into words: Number Converter