Greetings
 

Hello I signed up for fuelly today and started entering the fill-up data I've collected over the past two months and was surprised to see a relatively low MPG. I'll have to do a better job of conserving fuel!

One of the things I noticed as I created my account was a tip that mentioned stoichiometry: Tip: Accelerate, or keep it lean | Fuelly

As a hardcore science dork I had to read about it and I noticed there is a factual error in the beginning of the tip. While it does not affect the overall point I wish it could be corrected - the author of the tip seems to have been absent from this site since 2013 so contacting them would probably be fruitless.

The error is that it does not take 14.7kg to burn 1kg of petrol. It takes about 14.7 oxygen molecules per hydrocarbon molecule.

Since O2 is so much lighter than hydrocarbon molecules you can have 14.7 times more O2 molecules than C8H18 molecules and the O2 will be only 4 about times heavier than C8H18. So in order to burn 1kg of petrol you need only about 4kg of O2.

I suspect that there is nobody willing and able to make the correction but if you know who to contact or where to send this message please let me know.