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Do you guys think there will be a day when...

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Markbnj said:
Because the humans don't have any energy unless they extract it from the environment in the form of food. You'd be using humans to convert biomass into work and heat.
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I think many people have calories to spare in stored fat. Let's start biking in our homes to create electricity until the obesity problem is solved.

edti: seems as this was brought up if I just read farther...
 
IronWing said:
Getting work out of humans is difficult enough.
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"For every 12 inches you jog, you get another byte of cellphone data."


Obesity would end.
(If there was a way of preventing people from simply circumventing it.)



Vdubchaos said:
Why do people keep thinking there is magic when it comes to energy.

It HAS to come from SOMETHING. There is NO easy answer or magic when it comes to energy.

There never WILL be.

Meanwhile, best we can do is conserve and use the least energy possible.....and unfortuantely our society/corps do NOT want that.
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The key is to use waste energy before it just gets dissipated away as heat. If you can encourage that heat to do something useful first, just to yank a bit more energy out of it, then that's less wasted.
Problem is, as the temperature difference between two objects decreases, it gets harder and harder to extract energy - diminishing returns.
 
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i'd think the energy you get from that would be minuscule compared to real power plants. though i could see harvesting energy from the body by devices implanted into the body itself e.g. glucose powered
 
SSSnail said:
No, no fatties, please. We need people that move around, like a lot.

Judging from some if the replies, it seems that a lot of you lack a sense of humor, thereby also lacking intelligence.

Alright, for shits and giggles, let's say one day when we can perfect wireless energy transfer, and that we can develop these nano kinetic generators, and that we can embed them into fabrics to make clothes, and that the energy would be harnessed from movements by people doing every day stuff, and there would be wireless ”collecting” stations strategically placed so that when a human wearing these things walk by, the energy would be automatically uploaded wirelessly...

You know, it's not that far fetch...

You know what? Some of you Fockers are no fun, like, at all.
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I didn't notice all the emoticons in the first post, so took it as a serious idea. Considering how many people have died over energy supplies I guess I just don't see the humor in energy shortages.

At least you made the classic spelling/grammar when insulting someone's intelligence, that one is a classic.

Just for shits and giggles, you are missing what Rakehellion was saying about chemical energy in food. It takes calories to make kinetic energy with the human body. 2000 calories is only .002326 kWh, which is not even a drop in the bucket of a households energy use.

They say that 75 watts over an 8 hour period is about average energy output, where a really well trained athlete can do bursts of 400 watts for an hour. These power outputs are laughably small when compared to even basic home electric uses much less HVAC.

Sorry to "dumb down" your fun thread with empirical data.
 
Yeah, but how much energy do you think can be produced from yanking alone? All wasted!

Have you ever engaged in any nonsensical bantering with friends? What do you mean you don't have any friends?
 
ch33zw1z said:
I think many people have calories to spare in stored fat. Let's start biking in our homes to create electricity until the obesity problem is solved.

edti: seems as this was brought up if I just read farther...
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The simple way to think about it is that all our energy uses are a series of transformations from the sun to the point in time and space where we need heat created to do work. So in this scenario we run solar power through plants and into humans (or animals and then humans) and then store it as fat and then convert it back into work which is converted into electricity and transmitted over lossy lines to point of use. Yep, should work. All you fatties wire up your bikes.

Another way to look at this is if all overweight people attempted to connect their exercise bikes to the power grid we would see a decrease in national health care costs, after an initial spike in coroner and funeral expenses.
 
Markbnj said:
The simple way to think about it is that all our energy uses are a series of transformations from the sun to the point in time and space where we need heat created to do work. So in this scenario we run solar power through plants and into humans (or animals and then humans) and then store it as fat and then convert it back into work which is converted into electricity and transmitted over lossy lines to point of use. Yep, should work. All you fatties wire up your bikes.

Another way to look at this is if all overweight people attempted to connect their exercise bikes to the power grid we would see a decrease in national health care costs, after an initial spike in coroner and funeral expenses.
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no need to start on the hard level!
 
Been there done that; see the American South. They still hold onto the blueprints, in hopes they can have the freedom once again, to enslave human beings.
 
It's been done. A few years ago some dudes at MIT built a bra that trapped kinetic energy with the underwire and converted it to a charge.

It's not a good way to generate energy, as has been mentioned, but it would be a decent way to recover some lost energy and presumably keep a cell phone or other portable electronics charged.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
It's been done. A few years ago some dudes at MIT built a bra that trapped kinetic energy with the underwire and converted it to a charge.

It's not a good way to generate energy, as has been mentioned, but it would be a decent way to recover some lost energy and presumably keep a cell phone or other portable electronics charged.
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Giggity.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
It's been done. A few years ago some dudes at MIT built a bra that trapped kinetic energy with the underwire and converted it to a charge.

It's not a good way to generate energy, as has been mentioned, but it would be a decent way to recover some lost energy and presumably keep a cell phone or other portable electronics charged.
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After I posted here I saw there was a new video from Vsauce2 which featured this device.

OP obviously handles criticism poorly, but it was funny timing.
 
What if we put all the fatties on treadmills and dangled a twinkie in front of them just out of their reach? They're like batteries filled with greasy, greasy energy. Given America's obesity epidemic, we have an entirely untapped renewable energy resource on out hands.
 
SSSnail said:
No, no fatties, please. We need people that move around, like a lot.
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Squirrels move around a lot, and they're closer to home. Make little squirrel pants, and they can power everything. It'll be just like the forums here. It'll work until it doesn't, and the power will go out for several hours every week.
 
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