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<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT face=Georgia>Hi brilliant
minds,</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT face=Georgia>I have a question for
you. I suppose that you have seen the pedal-power exhibit at the Pacific Science
Center. You pedal the bike and the faster/harder you pedal, the more lights
illuminate. The idea is to show how many calories you could burn in an hour at
that rate. The bulbs are sort of incidental. I contend that there is some kind
of trick involved but my friend thinks that the pedaling is actualy lighting the
bulbs via a generator.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT
face=Georgia></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT face=Georgia>His theory seems wrong to
me. You have to pedal like mad to get a headlight on a bike generator to light
up. That's maybe a 5 watt bulb, right? How can the same mechanism (albeit with a
possibly larger rotor) illuminate a whole bank of 60 watt bulbs? I think
that a person would burn about 600 calories per light bulb to keep it going
for ten seconds, if no energy were lost to friction. That's a third of the
normal daily energy of a person--for one bulb for ten seconds! A bank of bulbs
would burn days' worth of calories in a matter of seconds. That is, if my
calculations are correct. Looking at it from the reverse angle, I think that
pedaling the bike for ten seconds burns less than two calories. How can two
calories light up a bunch of bulbs? If that were possible, we could put
electrical turbines on streams instead of huge dams.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Georgia></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=671524021-29072008><FONT face=Georgia>Something is fishy. Who
is right? Am I completely wrong in my thinking...or math?</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face=Georgia>- Seth!</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>