How many times stronger is caffiene than nicotine?

Question

i am just wondering.

Answer 1

Caffeine and nicotine act differently so it isn't possible to say which is stronger.

Answer 2

You're expecting a number as an answer. That means we need a number describing the extent of caffeine's psychological/physiological effects, as well as a number for nicotine, and we need to take their ratio.

Where are all these numbers coming from? No meaning can be assigned to your question until you explain, "what do you mean by stronger"?

For example, you may say that Larry is twice as strong as Dave. However, there are multiple ways to measure muscle strength. It may be that Larry has an isometric strength twice as great as Dave (isometric strength is the maximum amount of force you can exert at once), or it may be that Larry's isotonic strength is twice as high (isotonic strength is the maximum amount of force that you can maintain for a short period of time). And, you haven't discussed whether we are talking about arm strength, or strength of some other muscles, etc.

The only numbers I can really give you are the LD50 quantities of caffeine and nicotine - the estimated dose which has about a 50% chance of killing a human being. For caffeine this is about 170 mg/kg, whereas for nicotine it is around 0.5 mg/kg to 1.0 mg/kg. Therefore, in terms of how poisonous these alkaloids are - nicotine is around 200-350 times more toxic than caffeine (liberal rounding is employed).

Edit: How many cigarettes does one cup of coffee equal? Since drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes don't have the same effect, this question is meaningless _unless_ you specify a particular quantifiable physiological response to these substances. (e.g. how much of it does it take to kill you, as above.)

Answer 3

About the same a concentrated dose of either will kill you and long term use will destroy your body. It's the long term damage from the smoke not the nicotine that causes lung problems