Question is as the title suggests really.
Essentially I went on a watt bike the other day and my friend said I nearly produced one horse power. So obviously I then googled how much horse power a horse produces, and then when I found out it is more than one I was curious as to what animal produces one horse power and what we should change the measurement ‘horsepower’ too.
Also, I don’t think I’ve ever typed horse and horse power so much in such a little space
In: Mathematics
The term horsepower is not referring to the peak energy output of a horse but rather the long time average output of a horse. If you were close to 750W on an exercise bike that was probably just for a short while. Similarly a horse can do 15 horsepower for a very short while. But just as you on the exercise bike the horse gets tired very quickly when doing that much work. If you were to take part in a long distance bike race such as the Tour de France there is no way you could do 750W, You might only do 200W average during the race. But you might only keep that up for 6 hours and have to rest until next day. So your total average would be down to 50W. This would be 1 humanpower.
Similarly if you have a horse pull a cart all day or power some machinery it can not do 15 horsepower all day. And after a few hours it would need rest. So its average over several days would be much closer to 1 horsepower. The unit was invented by the sales team of James Watt who were selling steam engines to replace horses at factories. They would measure the power output of the engines in horsepower. That meant that when they came to a factory to sell a steam engine they could simply just poke their head into the stables to see how big of an engine the factory needed. Unlike horses steam engines could output the same power all day and night without rest.
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