>> But it's not a calculation most people would bother to make, because the
>> power consumption of a PC is "negligible".
>
> Actually not so much.  A 450 W power supply draws a reasonably
> significant amount of power.

Yeah, generally you only find power supplies that meaty on high-end 
"leet gamer" PCs. I'm guessing Google doesn't use those.

Even 450W is peanuts compared to what my kettle uses. (3.6 kW)

>> In a similar vein, the heat output of a normal human in a large empty
>> room is also negligible. But weirdly, if you put /a lot/ of humans in a
>> room, no matter how big that room is, they manage to raise the
>> temperature of the whole room. Unexpected, but true...
>
> Not unexpected at all - completely rational and in line with the laws of
> thermodynamics.

Sure. But humans don't think in terms of thermodynamics, they think in 
terms of common everyday experience.

Random fact: If you're dangling from a wire above a pit of molten lava, 
YOU DIE. In particular, you do /not/ have to actually *touch* the lava 
for it to kill you. An entire lake radiates easily enough heat to cook a 
small elephant, never mind your skinny arse. And that's without even 
taking into account convection and all the toxic gasses.

Really, that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is 
laughably implausible... But most people actually have no clue exactly 
how hot lava really is. It's not in their everyday experience.

Actually, going back to my previous point: The amount of /moisture/ 
emitted by a normal human is absurdly small. And yet, put enough of them 
in a room, and it can get astonishingly moist in there! o_O

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