Donovan Banks wrote
a quick one on the fillin gof yoru tank.
the density of petrol is around 0.8g/cm3. That means one litre should weigh about 800g. a 45l tank therefore weighs only 36kg.
thats a negligble difference on most cars.
In the moment, yes, over a month it may get significant.
So many of these energy/money saving methods are taking care of the little things that add up to be a bigger thing.
This goes on in motor racing a lot - though with a different aim.
Steve Matchett, now a journalist and commentator, once a mechanic on the Benetton team, tells a tale of Ross Brawn who was the technical mastermind for all of Michael Schumacher's championships.
The story goes that they've got the new car ready for it's first run. Brawn wants to inspect the car before it goes out. He removes a screw from each side of the nose and hands them to Matchett saying "those aren't needed". Matchett says "you've saved about a gram." Brawn replies "yes... and that might save us a small fraction of a second per lap, but if I can remove as much as possible from the car without compromising it's performance and reliability then maybe I save a couple of 100ths of a second a lap. But that might mean the difference between pole and 2nd place on the grid."
It's what I do when I'm optimising some piece of software. There's generally not much in the way of big individual savings, but if it's processing a database table and there's 50 000 entries in that table, and I can save a 100th of a second per entry....
