NEW Alternative form of energy -- YOU

[asianpacific]

Hi people...

 

Im doing a project for environmental conservation... My group has come to a decision of using people's daily 'exercise' as a form of energy eg. walking, running, working out... Simple actions as such can be converted to electrical energy... other alternative forms of energy that exist in the world would be HEP, solar energy, and wind energy...

 

So to protect the environment and to decrease the amount of fossil fuels being dug out a year... Why not you play a part by using yourself as a source of energy... Why not attach a device to your shoes that can produce energy while you walk... and then use this energy stored to power up your house... firstly, you save up on utility bills and secondly, and more importantly, you are saving the environment...

 

I would like to hear your views about this... Just tell me whether you agree or disagree and why...

 

Many thanks...

[neo007]

Sounds like a great idea(strongly agree), which i have thought of myself before.

However to actually set up something like this would probably cost a bit of money. There are some pratical issues too, like would someone like fit a device to their shoe?And what would happen when the shoe is thrown away, etc.

I think solar enery would be more feasible

[insane_alien]

well peizoelectric(sp?) devices could be fitted into the shoes and the batteries in a pack worn somewhere but it wouldn't create a significant amount of energy unless you do a 100 mile march everyday. you could hook up a generator to an exercise bike and you can power a tv and a few light bulbs (i done this ). alternatively you could store that in batteries. solar is easiest though.

[rajama]

Okay, so I walk to and from work maybe a total of 5 miles each day and for me this would - in principle - be a possibility, but I'm pretty much alone in this at the office.

 

Most people walk to their car, and then take a lift/elevator/escalator to their floor. I would guess that even commuters rarely walk more than half a mile. Lunch is bought-in.

 

I don't know anyone who actually runs unless they are on a treadmill and paying for the privilege - okay, so then that would work.

 

Most people sit for long periods just giving off heat...

 

So here's a thought - why not use body heat instead? There must be a way to tap into this - if I'm at 36 degrees and the room is at around 21, that's a 15 degree difference all day, and it will be even higher when you're sleeping because most people like to sleep in a cool room...

 

What do you think?

 

Maybe you're considering people in non-industrialised regions..?

 

Hope this is helpful.

[Martin]

... you could hook up a generator to an exercise bike and you can power a tv and a few light bulbs (i done this ). alternatively you could store that in batteries. solar is easiest though.

 

that/s been a fantasy my wife mentions every now and then since the 1970s when her Dad first bought an exercise bike and we had the "OPEC oil crisis" at the same time. she thinks it would be clever.

 

I have always thought an in-shape athelete could do, like, 300 watts

and an ordinary person maybe 100 watts, or 150, for an extended period like 20 minutes.

 

what is your experience? how much watts could you, personally, generate for an extended stretch like 20 minutes at a time?

[Martin]

... My group has come to a decision of using people's daily 'exercise' as a form of energy eg. walking' date=' running, working out... Simple actions as such can be converted to electrical energy... other alternative forms of energy that exist in the world would be HEP, solar energy, and wind energy...

...[/quote']

 

I think your group has chosen the wrong source of energy to study.

I think that wind and photovoltaic solar panels are better than human muscles as sources of electricity.

 

there are also many opportunities to CONSERVE energy, so we use less

rather than find ways to generate more.

 

About using muscle power, though, there is one muscle-power thing that could replace a lot of hydrocarbon fuel and that is BICYCLING TO WORK, but in the United States for example that would require creating special corridors for bicyclists to make it ATTRACTIVE. you can't just tell people they must commute by bicycle if they live within a certain radius of work. you have to make it so they freely CHOOSE to do it.

 

for me, I have chosen to ride bicycle more often when there was a clean, safe, pleasant road, without much noise and traffic. maybe one could design bikeways with some protection from wind and rain and noise and automobile traffic.

 

With his legs a man only can generate about 100 watts. But a car uses about 100,000 watts. So if the man can use his legs to REPLACE using the car, then he is saving a thousand times more power than he can actually generate with an exercise bike.

[swansont]

With his legs a man only can generate about 100 watts. But a car uses about 100,000 watts. So if the man can use his legs to REPLACE using the car, then he is saving a thousand times more power than he can actually generate with an exercise bike.

 

And that's the salient point. The amount of energy we use with common devices makes the amount we could generate with the human body pale in comparison. Which is the point of building the machines, really.

[Lance]

Try looking at the meter outside your house that says how much power your'e using, then take a hand crank generator and see how close you can get.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

An add-on to the piezoelectric shoes: A piezoelectric sidewalk. Put it in Times Square or some place with high pedestrian traffic. You could generate quite a bit of electricity off of that.

 

I also know that some farms use the cattle's movement on a pad (not piezoelectric, but mechanical) to pump water out of a well.

[brad89]

I agree with the whole energy of walking and running. But the thing is, why couldn't such a device be attached to everything? The wheels of your car, the feet of your pets, the blades of your ceiling fan? Also, it would be effective with athletes and sports stars. However, I don't understand how much energy it would develop. If everyone did it, maybe we would get somewhere. But when one person does about a half a block jog and expects to power his home, they are expecting too much. For such a thing to work, you need to have time on your hands, and to be active.

[asianpacific]

I think your group has chosen the wrong source of energy to study.

well... the only reason we chose this source is because we are suppose to think of a NEW method of energy source...

 

i noe that is sth really difficult but its only a school project.... however... i still need your feedbacks...

[Martin]

... My group has come to a decision of using people's daily 'exercise' as a form of energy eg. walking, running, working out... Simple actions as such can be converted to electrical energy...

 

You can still make it into an interesting science project, which the teacher will probably like.

 

Find out what wattage of "exercise power" each one of the people in your group can put out.

 

this will teach you a lot of physics.

 

You will have to learn about metric units of force and energy and power. To measure someone's mechanical work output rate requires, in effect, designing a simple physics experiment.

 

here are two examples:

A. raising a weight

 

B. generating electricity (measuring rate of energy output by dynamometer)

 

Your teacher could like both of these. With A. if you have a 200 newton weight (roughly 20 kilo) and you pull on a rope to raise it, and you raise it 15 meters, then you have done 15 x 200 joules of work.

that is 3000 joules. If you can do that in 20 seconds then you are delivering 150 joules per second----that is 150 watts. (that is very macho power for a human, I think)

 

You would have to change the numbers to make this more practical. this is a very crude example.

 

With B. you would have to borrow some equipment. some electric generator, some electricity gauges, or an actual dynamometer that measures power. some GYMNASIUMS in your area might have a dynamometer built into some exercise bike or other equipment. You would have to do some research.

 

Science teachers often like it when you actually MEASURE, like if you can find a way to do it, measure how much each person in the group can generate. How many watts average over some definite timeperiod like 10 minutes or 20 minutes.

 

In my opinion this is not going to solve the world's problems, but it will be very educational for your group. In the long run having more knowledge and understanding of physics will help solve the world's problems, so that is OK. Find out, by actual experiment, what kind of wattage output humans can do.

 

You say you want feedbacks, this is my feedback and probably other people have different thoughts about it.

 

BTW there is also the concept of EFFICIENCY how many joules of food energy do you burn while you are cranking out some joules of mechanical exercise work. usually a machine (or human) uses quite a bit more fuel energy than they produce in work energy. So you could be burning fuel at the rate 500 watts while you are doing work at the rate 100 watts, and the rest of it is going into heat. this is called 20 percent efficiency.

 

You learn a lot by doing this project. this is my feedback, not sure it will help, hope the suggestions you get here are useful

[Lance]

If your adept in the dumpster diving arts then you can also find a decent motor and a multimeter. A motor is the same thing as a generator; if you turn it by hand it will output electrical power. With a multimeter you can measure the voltage then the current and assume that the voltage will be constant. Then just multiply the current in amps by the [assumed] constant voltage. Of course the voltage will vary with the current but I don't think your teacher would notice/care.

 

The motor used for turning the table in microwaves works very good for this. You can very easily light a neon build with it. It can also deliver quit a hefty shock into unsuspecting victims.

 

Converting cheeseburgers into electrical power...mmmm.