On what seems to be an idea that popped up from the phrase “penny for your thoughts”, the University of Leicester has conducted a study to determine the price of brainpower in English pennies. A value of a penny was found to be worth of three hours, seven minutes and thirty seconds of thinking.

Osarenkhoe Uwuigbe, a Natural Sciences student at the University of Leicester’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Science, mashed up Economics of thinking and several assumptions about brain power to arrive at the conclusion that 20 watts of energy were used in thinking, i.e., 20% of the total 100 watts of average energy produced. For calculating the cost of power, he used the price per kilowatt hour (kWh) offered by UK energy providers as a reference point.

To break it up:

20 W = 1/5 kW power to keep our minds ticking.

A penny buys 1/16th of a kWh (assuming you can speak as fast as you can think),

This works out to (1/16) ÷ (1/50) = 3.12 hours.

Lastly, Uwuigbe points out the limitations of this paper, and the assumptions that could be wrong, “This model is likely to be an underestimate as power required for the brain to operate does not necessarily translate to power used in thought,” says Uwuigbe. “The brain has several autonomic functions it carries out during thought processing and as a result thought processing could not take 100 percent of the power consumption of the brain.

Furthermore, it is unlikely that it is possible to think as fast as you speak due to delay caused by biological constraints such as conduction velocity of nerves carrying the signal from the brain to the mouth, the release of Ca2+ ions during muscle contraction of the tongue and lips and so on.”

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Author:Technology Blog