this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2025
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My power company DOES tell me in Joules, but only for gas so that's already bullshit, and I live in Alberta so people already can't decipher their fucking power bill's opaque energy/distribution fee/transmission fee costs so that's bullshit too
But ...we're human - bullshit is really all we've got.
I suppose there is science, but eww...
In the U.S., they meter gas by the "therm," which is defined as 100,000 BTUs. It's a misconception that it's equal to 100 cubic feet of natural gas at standard temperature and pressure, and is merely a coincidence that those values are very close.
BTUs are like a shitty imperial calorie, the energy it takes to heat up one pound of water by one degree fahrenheit.
Also, don't confuse therms for thermies, a totally different unit that means the amount of energy required to heat up a tonne (1000 kg) (not to be confused with the imperial ton that is 2000 pounds) of water by 1°C.
Energy is so useful in so many different contexts that we can just always expect a million ways to express it.