Posted on 07/25/2007 1:17:54 PM PDT by topher
A typical electric moped/bike DOES allow for peddling.
I just threw a special-built electric motor on my mountain bike, and I can peddle all I want, or run it from the battery, or both. Great for riding around, when you get tired the bike can drive you home.
If a human being is capable of providing 0.1 HP of power and it is convertible to energy at 100% (which is impossible), then we are talking about 74.6 W of output power.
Pedaling for 20 hours will produce 1.492 KWh not KW.
Obviously 1 billion people therefore will produce 1,492 GWh (Giga Watt Hours) - which is nothing to sneeze at.
It takes a nuclear power plant to produce 1,000 MW. In fact the largest nuke plant in US is Palo Verde 2 with an output of 1,335 MW. The largest power plant in the world is ITAIPU which is a hydro plant with an output of 12,600 MW.
Thought I sort this out.
Ergo, wouldn’t a hand saw be better ?
You know all of these modern devices today are ... Well, pardon the ignorant and ultimately wrong term - Digital. They are supposed to be working on less power than ever before.
But they aren’t.
Even Cell phones aren’t lasting longer. They are simply packing more juice into smaller batteries. PCs, LCD televisions (Which were directly marketted to take LESS power than a CRT) and other gadgets are really getting quite hungry.
A laptop should, in our current technologies and speeds, be able to run for about 5 minutes on a little crank of a static generator.
I mean come on. Flying cars is one thing. But we’re supposed to be slightly more ahead of where we are.
One must realize that most >consumer< electronics are deamnding les and less power...high end computers excepted. The trend is toward more personal elctroinc devies and that means less power consumption. What does it really take to power a radio, a small tv, an Ipod, led lights and etcetera? At one time people scoffed at watches that never need winding or batteries and yet they have been around and working quite well for some time.
I for one welcome being off the grid.
prisoner6
How much energy does it take to grow the food that must be eaten to generate one megawatt.
Self Ping
(I know, if I keep doing this I’ll go blind.)
The YMCA, where I live is absolutely packed with 150 people every night, all working out. What a waste.
My idea was to add a visual effect. A very large, clear water tank in the center of the room to act as an accumulator. It would have clear pipes to feed the water into small turbines. The turbines would generate electricity.
The amount and rate of electricity being generated would be prominently displayed for all to see.
Then, I’d design all types of machines and games to move water from the floor to the top of the tank. You could have pedal machines, tug-o-war, weight lifting, all kinds of stuff.
As you stated, you could have intramural and school competitions.
You could have schools design better machines.
How do you make money? Membership is free. People get to work out and have fun, for free. Money is made by selling power back to the power company.
I don’t know, but I heard a piece of a story several months ago about some nuclear scientist in America who got hammered into submission by the feds for “tinkering” around in his garage with a reactor prototype.
If we have the technology now to power a submarine that has less square footage than my house safely, we can for sure fit one into everyone’s garage along with the chicken in every pot we’ll all be able to buy when we get off the grid.
bump for later reading
This would be something constructive and practical to do to lose weight and save on an electric bill.
Just as there are Internet Cafes, it is possible, though it may be more science fiction, to one day have Kilowatt Kafes where you receive credits on your energy bill for working out at a place that sells the generated electricity but is also an exercise gym.
But the following is an explanation of the original definition of horsepower:
The term "horsepower" was invented by James Watt to help market his improved steam engine. He had previously agreed to take royalties of one third of the savings in coal from the older Newcomen steam engines[4]. This royalty scheme did not work with customers who did not have existing steam engines but used horses instead. Watt determined that a horse could turn a mill wheel 144 times in an hour (or 2.4 times a minute). The wheel was 12 feet in radius, thus in a minute the horse travelled 2.4 × 2p × 12 feet. Watt judged that the horse could pull with a force of 180 pounds (just assuming that the measurements of mass were equivalent to measurements of force in pounds-force, which were not well-defined units at the time). So:power = \frac{work}{time} = \frac{force \times distance}{time} = \frac{(180 \mbox{ lbf})(2.4 \times 2 \pi \times 12 \mbox{ ft})}{1\ \mbox{min}}=32,572 \frac{\mbox{ft} \cdot \mbox{lbf}}{\mbox{min}} This was rounded to an even 33,000 ft·lbf/min[5].
So a horsepower is 33,000 foot-pounds per minute.
The guy on the website must be crazy because he claims to be able to produce 300+ watts (25 year) and 200+ watts for a 50 year old. Maybe he is saying that it is not sustained.
One horsepower is equal to about 746 watts. One tenth of a horsepower would be 74.6 watts. I think someone might be able to do that sustained (such as the leader of the Tour de France -- a person such as Lance Armstrong -- in his prime. Could I or you? Probably not.
You a weblink or brand name? I use a mountain bike quite a lot...
Maybe Al Gore III had all that vicodin to get his Prius up to 100 mph (when he was recently arrested in Los Angeles -- pedaling his Prius per Fred Flintstone...)
Nope. It was a Schwinn mountain bike, and I can’t remember the name of the motor drive manufacturer at the moment, some california company that might have gone out of business.
Nobody’s really doing the attachments thing anymore, you just go to one of those electric bike stores (there’s one in new york) and buy the thing already built.
The liberals probably need to spend $1 trillion to solve this problem...
I think some sort Kilowatt Kafe where you could socialize (while sweating) and get some sort of electric credit would be healthy (in more ways than one).
There have been suggestions of putting this in prisons...
There is merit to that, as the prisoners could get exercise/vent frustrations rather than other things...
Why do you think Gilligan was so skinny?
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