After the first 20 minutes, the water temperature appeared to rise at a nearly constant rate of 0.0006 degrees Celsius per second. This increase in temperature means an increase in thermal energy and can be calculated as:
here meter is the mass of the object (in this case water), and C is the specific heat capacity, or the amount of thermal energy required to raise the temperature of the substance by 1°C. Regarding water, C is 4.186 joules per gram per degree Celsius. So from 1,000 ml of water and my rate of temperature change, we know that the water requires 2.51 joules (or 2.51 watts) of power per second.
Oh, look at that. Even using this rudimentary measurement system, this is pretty close to the power delivered to the Raspberry Pi. This difference is probably due to imperfect insulation. Therefore, it turns out that the power of cryptocurrencies is just thermal energy. Honestly, I’m surprised it went so well.
Show me the money!
It’s possible to run a cryptocurrency miner as a way to keep your house warm, but that’s probably not why people do it. What’s the payoff? Well, let’s do some quick math. I ran the Raspberry Pi miner for 12 hours. How much money did it generate? Wait… 0.00000006 XMR. Converting this to US dollars is 0.0012 cents (not dollars). Yes, this would be a slow way to build wealth. Even after running it for 12,000 hours, I still can’t buy a piece of chewing gum. They probably don’t even use chewing gum.
And that’s not even considering cost. This means that mining is not free and you have to pay for electricity. The average electricity cost in the United States is 16.94 cents per kilowatt hour. Running a miner at 3 watts for 12 hours yields 24 watt-hours, or 0.024 KWh. Using electricity costs 0.41 cents. Let’s do a quick calculation here. Yes, 0.41 cents is more money than I made. I’m no financial expert, but this seems like a bad business model.
Of course, no one except physicists would mine cryptocurrencies on a Raspberry Pi. There are fancy mining machines (costing thousands of dollars) that can mint coins faster with less energy. Another thing to consider is the future price of the cryptocurrency. Even if the cost exceeds the reward today, it may be worth more someday. Finally, cryptocurrency miners may be located in locations where electricity is cheap. It is also possible to run the miner on solar power.
However, remember that for every joule of energy you put into the miner, you generate 1 joule of thermal energy. We need to get rid of that heat. Otherwise, your computer will experience problems. However, cooling systems use more energy, which can make it difficult to produce profitable currency.
But there’s a fair amount of mining going on in the US, so it should work. It is estimated that in 2024, 2.3% of electrical energy will be used for cryptocurrencies. This is a significant amount, and we don’t really know if it’s the best use of our energy supply, especially since cryptocurrencies are just a hoax.
(Tag Translation) Physics
