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
Awful.
To make the awfulness manifest, [have a look at this absolute unit attempting to make toast](https://youtu.be/S4O5voOCqAQ?si=Pim5OQ7W8hb2Sgom).
We’re very efficient at locomoting ourselves (again, A Bad Thing for those trying to lose weight via exercise), but this translates badly if trying to attach that power to anything external.
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