Ignoring the blatant ethical issues associated with this question, I’m genuinely curious from a scientific standpoint how efficient the human body is at generating energy. I’m a chemical engineering major and after learning about combustion engines and steam generation, there’s a great deal of inefficiency. After taking an intro to biochemistry course it seems like the human body is incredibly efficient at energy efficiency, using food as the fuel. I was also made curious by that one black mirror episode where people rode those standing bikes as their job, I think it was for power generation but I can’t really remember. Would it actually be a good substitute in terms of equivalent power and clean energy? Again, a horrible hypothetical given the history and current use of people in such dehumanizing ways, and if this really isn’t something to be discussed, I apologize.
In: Engineering
Shhhh…don’t give the Chinese any ideas. Next thing you know, there’ll be sprawling buildings with people strapped to stationary bikes generating electricity. Like an origin story for Conan.
And to answer your question, we are more efficient than machines, but converting that dietary intake into pedal action and into electricity will suffer a large efficiency loss.
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