Question 1 is pretty straightforward. We
assume metabolic rate in Watts equals body
mass in grams, so the hippo has a mass of
1 million grams, so it would have a
metabolic rate of 1 million Watts.
Easy enough. Ok, part 2, says what if we
assume that metabolic rate equals body
mass raised to the 2/3 power.
One million raised to the 2/3, it is easy
to see if you know something about the
way exponents work, that it's equal to
10 thousand Watts. But, let's look and
see how to do this using Google.
Here I am at the Google window, I am going
to type in 1000000, which is 1 with 6 0's
raised to the 2/3's.
I get the calculator and it tells me that
it is 10000. Ok, same as question 1, but
assume that metabolic rate is equal to
body mass to the 3/4, again I used Google
for this and got approximately 31, 623.