I was talking to Alan after I came back from our meeting and he posed a question to me, which I'm now going to pass on to you guys: Which has the highest free energy, the chicken or the egg?
Both contain all the information required to produce an entire chicken so their entropy would be comparable. My thought is that it would come down to the chemical potential energy in the chicken as it is bigger and would burn for longer. Is anyone else hungry?
That sounds sensical. Don't forget that the chicken would also have had a few good meals in it's time adding to the chemical potential.
For some reason though the egg appeals to me as having a high energy. Perhaps it's just the philosopher in me leaning towards the potential for life as being greater than chemistry. How would you quantify that...
Both contain all the information required to produce an entire chicken so their entropy would be comparable. My thought is that it would come down to the chemical potential energy in the chicken as it is bigger and would burn for longer. Is anyone else hungry?
ReplyDeleteThat sounds sensical. Don't forget that the chicken would also have had a few good meals in it's time adding to the chemical potential.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason though the egg appeals to me as having a high energy. Perhaps it's just the philosopher in me leaning towards the potential for life as being greater than chemistry. How would you quantify that...