Compare the efficiency of two cars. Please help.?

Question

Fill the tanks with the same type of gas. Determine how many miles they travel. Fill the tanks again. Determine the gas consumed by each. Calculate the equivalent amount of energy spent by each car (I need the equivalent amount of energy per gallon of gas). Calculate the energy per mile consumed by each car. I need to describe my procedure, record measurements and calculations. I just don't know where to start. Please help!

Answer 1

Hi Jed. Welcome to "Answers".

This basically looks like a 'gas mileage' issue, so you appear to need to calculate the miles per gallon for each car. To determine the amount of energy consumed by each car (once you know the # of gallons consumed) you will need to know the energy content in a gallon of gas. Hopefully, this has been given to you, or, you can try to find it on the net.

1) Start by recording these measurements:
the starting mileage on the odometer of each car after filling up with gas.

2) Next, record the number of miles driven at the next fill up (current miles on odometer less starting miles on odometer).

3) Record the amount of gas it takes to fill up the tank.

4) Now divide the total miles driven for each car, by the number of gallons of gas consumed by each car. This will give you the miles per gallon for each car.

Taking the amount of energy in a gallon of gas (again, hopefully you were given this info. or you found it on the web), you can now calculate the energy per mile consumed by each car.

Best wishes and good luck.

I just did a web search. Wikipedia has info. on energy content of gasoline: 131 megajoules per U.S. gallon of gas which equals 125,000 BTU per U.S. gallon.