To make Hugh feel better. I'll tell a little story about a physical
chemist at the University of Wisconsin. His name is Farrington Daniels,
and he wrote a best selling textbook on physical chemistry.
Story goes that Daniels, preparing for an undergraduate lecture, noted
that the heat of fusion of ice is 79 calories per gram. If one adds to
that 37 calories necessary to raise a gram of ice at zero degrees C to
body temperature, it is easy to see that eating gram of ice will incur
a metabolic deficit of 116 calories which the body will have to replace
by burning food energy. Daniels was in a hurry, but he quickly figured
that the intake of a mere 8.6 grams of ice would burn 1,000 calories!
Amazed that no nutritionist had ever discovered this before, Daniels
rushed into the classroom and, during that lecture, blurted out his
remarkable discovery - and suggested it as a way of reducing weight.
One of his students pointed out that Daniels had confused calories and
Calories, and that the consumption of 8.6 kilograms of ice per day was
probably not going to become an attractive weight loss scheme.