Suppose a much larger house using less electricity using these methods?
In: Engineering
This works nice if you have some graph paper.
Draw a line one line segment long.
Now make a square in which the length of each side of the square is equal to the length of the line you drew.
How many square boxes does it make? Just 1.
Now make your line 2 line segments long. Make your square out of it.
How many square boxes this time? 4.
By doubling the length of the line segment, we scale our boxes by 4.
If we were to extend this analogy, then we can imagine how a cube is constructed of six 2D squares.
If each square has side length 1, then the cube will have a volume of 1x1x1 = 1
If each square has side length 2, then the 2D boxes will have 4 squares each, and there will be a total of 2x2x2 of those small cubes.
So x2 line length = x4 box size = x8 cube size
This is what the square-cube law says – As we increase the length of lower dimensions (length vs cubes), the higher dimension (cubes) will grow significantly quicker than the lower dimension (length)
With regards to heating, this says that the volume of your house (the inside) will grow quicker than the walls of your house (the surface). Since heat can only be exchanged at a surface, then a bigger house will lose less heat than two individual houses whose total size is the same as the big house. More surface area = more heat loss.
You’ll still have to spend the energy to heat up all of that space of course, but the bigger the house is, the more efficient it is at preventing heat loss for higher volumes.
Latest Answers