October 29, 2008

Question for the Board

The other day I was by myself riding the elevator in the JFSB in no particular hurry to get anyplace when it occurred to me that I might be wasting money. How much was this elevator ride costing the school? I'm healthy and perfectly capable of taking the stairs, especially since no one else was hopping on the elevator. Was I just being selfish? This was my line of thought at the time, which was leading me to believe that I might be able to create a soap box of the issue and make some political stance. But I'd have to check my facts first, of course, so I took my question to the 100 hour board (they'll answer any question in 100 hours; theboard.byu.edu)...

Q
Dear 100 Hour Board,
How much does it cost in electricity to ride a elevator four floors in the JFSB?
- gandyman
Direct Link to Question

A Dear Gandyman,
According to this site, riding an elevator one floor uses about 2.5 watt-hours, which is about half as much energy as it takes to charge up your cell phone battery. So, four times that is 10 Wh. To put that in perspective, a KILOWatt-hour costs about seven cents. So when going four floors, you're costing the university about .07 cents.
-Claudio

...there it is. So much for my political "let's save the economy by taking the stairs" soap box. Apparently it cost vertually nothing to ride the elevator . Unless I overlooked something...

1 comment:

Julie Ann said...

Haha this is funny. You are a much better person than I am because I'm pretty sure I wrote a blog post complaining about having to take the stairs. (I hate those annoying signs in the Tanner building that say "For your heart's sake, take the stairs." It always makes me feel guilty and want to retort back to the sign with, "I will take the elevator if I darn well please!!"