Human energy

[Good Friar]

How much energy could a person generate turning a generator in some fashion? (e.g. hand crank, treadmill, pushing a large mill wheel while being whipped by a taskmaster, etc)

[Popinjay]

You forgot chili-eating contest

[Hedge Henderson]

[ QUOTE ]
How much energy could a person generate turning a generator in some fashion?

[/ QUOTE ]

For how long?

It's really not as much as you might think. At 2000 calories per day, you use about as much energy as a 100-Watt bulb, but the majority of that energy is lost as heat, or used in metabolic processes. Only a small amount of it is available to do mechanical work.

I'm far too lazy to calculate caloric expenditure, adjust for metabolic efficiency, convert to Watts, and adjust again for energy lost as heat, generator efficiency, etc. Best guess: Assuming a reasonably efficient electrical generator, someone like, say, Lance Armstrong could probably keep your computer and monitor running for a good 30 minutes or so before he slowed down.

[Josh W]

If I'm not mistaken, we actually eat like 2 million calories in a day.

What is listed under nutritional information is actually kilocalories (ya know, in case anybody wanted to do some calculations...)

Josh

[Piz0wn0reD!!!!!!]

[ QUOTE ]
Best guess: Assuming a reasonably efficient electrical generator, someone like, say, Lance Armstrong could probably keep your computer and monitor running for a good 30 minutes or so before he slowed down.

[/ QUOTE ]
this has to be wrong

[fimbulwinter]

its wrong in the sense that nobody can put out 300W of physical force over really any period of time.

if you really wanted to harvest peoples, the body heat would be where it's at (in like a closed ammonia cycle or something). heat from the body far outweighs any marginal physical energy we can exert (just look at metabolic pathways to see why).

fim

[codewarrior]

Soylent Green is people.

[Reef]

[ QUOTE ]
its wrong in the sense that nobody can put out 300W of physical force over really any period of time.

if you really wanted to harvest peoples, the body heat would be where it's at (in like a closed ammonia cycle or something). heat from the body far outweighs any marginal physical energy we can exert (just watch the Matrix to see why).

fim

[/ QUOTE ]

fixed

[The once and future king]

Do you know what a calorie is?

It is enough energy to heat a litre of water by 1 centigrade.

[TStoneMBD]

a better question would be how many sentinels could survive off the energy of 3billion matrix inhibitors?