Tuesday, July 22, 2008

How Much Power Can You Generate

Could you light a 60W bulb with the energy you use to climb? From this website, the equation for power is:

power = work ÷ time (equation 1)

work = force x distance (equation 2)

The distance is the vertical height climbed (in meters).

force = mass x gravity (equation 3)

Mass is the weight of the climber (in kg).

Gravity (or more accurately, the acceleration due to gravity) is 10 meters/second/second.

So putting these into equation 3, and then that into equation 2 we get: work = weight x 10 x height (equation 4)

And putting this into equation 1 gives us: power = weight x 10 x height ÷ time (equation 5)

This equation gives the average power output (watts) required for a given weight (kg) to climb a given height (meters) in a given time (seconds).

So I used the above equation to calculate the watts I generated when I climbed "Looking for Lust" at RW this week. 72kg x 10 x 21 m ÷ 240 seconds (it took me about 4 minutes) = 64 watts.

Wow, that's a lot. This might be a solution to green power. So could I light an electric bulb with that amount of output? I did some research at this site and found out a 60 watt bulb uses 60 watts per second. I did the climb in approximately 240 seconds so that equals a .27 watt bulb (that's 27 hundredths of a watt per second). And I'd need to climb it 24/7.

I guess I'm just a very dim bulb.

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Too much math and to much work! What say we use some coal! I might be a bit late tomorrow as I have to meet with some folks about a wind turbine. More on my opinion about that later...