[JimBad05]

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question527.htm According to this website, "biological engines" (ie. muscles) are much more efficient as far as calories than anything manmade. I'm just a high school kid, so I'm not well versed in the ways of enegry production, but isn't there some way that kinetic energy could be captured? Perhaps a new energy industry would arise where people ride bicycles which create energy (being paid of course). Perhaps this could even take the form of something like an exercise machine in the home. Or, what about some kind of device to take advantage of the kinetic energy released while walking?

[0mar]

There's no real effective way to grid all the expenditures up. And muscles better be damn efficent, our lives depend on it

[rerere]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JimBad05', ' ')I'm just a high school kid, so I'm not well versed in the ways of enegry production, but isn't there some way that kinetic energy could be captured?\

[gg3]

JimBad05, you're on the right track here. And I hope you keep researching and writing and thinking about this stuff. And keep a notebook handy for sketching out inventions. Everything counts.

Here's a way to use muscle power that's curently going to waste:

Take your average gymnasium or workout-place that has a bunch of stationary bicycles, treadmills, and so on. These machines presently allow all that muscle-input to go completely to waste, as heat that is dissipated largely through frictional surfaces that are set to provide a desired level of exercise-difficulty.

Now replace all those frictional surfaces with DC generators, which in turn charge a battery bank that feeds power back to the indoor lighting in the gym, supplemented by AC from the mains if needed.

Each person pedalling or otherwise putting muscular energy into the system, is generating about 200 watts. If translated to the efficiencies of compact fluorescent lighting, this is the equivalent of 800 watts of regular incandescent bulbs.

With that, 10 people pedalling produces the equivalent of 8 KW of incandescent lighting: more than enough to light the average gym altogether, not only the stationary bike and exercise-machine area. Perhaps the pool. Perhaps the martial-arts practice studio.

Does it pay back in strictly money terms? Maybe, maybe not, depends on how long your investment horizon is. On the other hand, most of what we need to do in order to deal with the PO energy crisis without pushing climate change over the edge, is not exactly short-term profitable. How long does it take to start making money on a utility-scale wind installation in anything less than a class-5 wind area? How long for a nuclear reactor? How long for the beefed-up transmission lines that take the power from the wind farms and reactors and get it to point of use...? And we need all of that, ASAP, along with every efficiency measure we can get.

So here's a way to quickly and easily turn an otherwise completely wasted energy output into an exercise in self-sufficiency (pun intended), making gyms self-sufficient in the electricity they use for lighting (possibly for other uses as well). Let's do it.

[Infared]

Maybe we can harness the muscular activity at whore houses also.

[bart]

I think human and animal energy will be important in a low-energy future, as JimBad05 suggests. After all, it was human and animal energy that largely powered civilization up to 1800!

I suspect that conversion to electricity, as gg3 suggests, will be reserved for those few uses for which only electricity is suitable. For example -- to power radios and computers.

The problem with electricity is that power is lost each time a conversion takes place: from human motion to electricity, over the grid (unless the electricity is used locally), and then in the motor or appliance.

Why not use the human power directly?

treadle-powered sewing machines (lathes, grinders. grain mills, etc.)
bicycles
hand tools for woodworking
hand pumps

Future technology may look a lot like that of the 18th and early 19th centuries. I think the key is to develop low-energy designs now, while we have the wealth to support scientists and engineers.

In fact, much work in this area has already gone on, under the name of Appropriate Technology.

[Itch]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')isn't there some way that kinetic energy could be captured?

[MikeB]

Itchy:$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'N')uclear, coal, and natural gas power permanently fuck things up from the waste they generate, but using slave labor would not cause such effects, or at least the severity wouldn't compare to the three sources that most people root for. Sometimes slaves can be treated better than others, but that, of course, depends on the availability of the resource.

[Itch]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hank you, Jonathan Swift.

[MikeB]

He wrote the ultimate satire called "A Modest Proposal" which offered, straight-faced, the following solution to poverty in England:

Eat the children of the poor.

[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MikeB', 'H')e wrote the ultimate satire called "A Modest Proposal" which offered, straight-faced, the following solution to poverty in England:

Eat the children of the poor.

[BabyPeanut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rerere', 'T')here was the 'prisoner treadmill' post today.

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MikeB', 'H')e wrote the ultimate satire called "A Modest Proposal" which offered, straight-faced, the following solution to poverty in England:
Eat the children of the poor.

[MikeB]

Much obliged for the correction, smg. Haven't read it in, like, twenty years?