I have an idea! see if it works?

Question

Have u seen the cartoons of"dextor's laboratory"
Dextor will make the lab rat run to produce electricity!
same way why can't we make humans( both men&women) to run(or walk) to convert that mechanical energy into electrical energy, this would also abolish unemployment problem!
pls answer , whether this would work unless it leads to slavery!

Answer 1

Great idea. And people would pay you to do it. Just build a gym where the weights are replaced by magnetic resistance. When people lift a "weight" they are actually spinning a generator where a tiny current is produced. A whole gym with a bunch of people working out at once would produce quite alot of electricity. And I think people would appreciate if they are able to go to the gym, put their cellphones and laptops on charge and watch their own effort doing recharging them. If one person is able to produce 25 watts on average for a whole hour think of what a nationwide chain of thes powergyms would do.

But don´t expect this to solve the unemployment problem. A human doing 100 watts (Lance Armstrong levels) would never produce enough electricity to cover the minimum wage.

-edit-

The more I think about it the better it sounds: A gym where you go and not only get some well needed exercise, you also produce electricity. That sounds fun! I would love to go to such a gym. I certainly need to exercise more but it is so fracking boring... Making exercise fun, by generating electricity, could be what makes more people (me included) go to the gym. And if all americans, for instance, were to exercise for just 30 minutes per day it would cut many many billions from the national healtcare costs as the number of obesity related illnesses would go down dramatically. This idea just might be a goldmine for the enterprise minded.

Answer 2

Because, since you have to pay them at least minimum wage, the energy they produce wouldn't cover the costs. A back up generator for a home is usually at least a two cylinder engine, how many people would it take to equal that. Even a one cylinder Honda camp generator goes about four hours on a gallon of gas. That means about 75 cents an hour to run.

EDIT:
The cost of a power gym would never be justified. The greatly added cost of the generating gym equipment, plus the cost of installation and interconnection to storage batteries, the cost of the batteries, the ventilation for the hydrogen gas from the charging batteries, and of coarse converting it to usable energy from the batteries.
If you think that you can use the energy directly from the exercise equipment, guess again. Each person works out at a different pace, thus creating different voltages and frequencies of A/C power, that it has to be cleaned,(the power). The last thing you would want to do is plug in a sensitive piece of electronic equipment into unregulated power.

On a small singular scale, it might work. Like a home version that does not store, but still has to regulate the power produced. However, on large scale the cost would make the membership fees to the gym way to high. The biggest problem with renewable energy, is storing for times that the energy is not, or cannot, be created. Without that, all renewables are useless, and I am greatly for renewables.

Answer 3

First off, the energy of a person walking comes from somewhere--food. But of course most people could use the exercise. But to produce enough energy, I can't even imagine how much you'd have to work out each day.

BTW, Walmart doesn't pay minimum wage.

Answer 4

Have you watched the Matrix movies.

I think that in history there have been innummerable times when someone had the brightidea of 'using' humans to create things, like the slaves that built the pryamids, the slaves that helped farm America.

You see where I'm going with this. It would be a good idea if it didn't contrivene one of our basic human rights, the right to freedom. :)

Answer 5

LOL, that is awesome. It's totally impossible to implement, but what a great idea. All those people who suck off the system would now have to earn their way! Or, think of all of us that need exercise and PAY to go to a gym and go on a treadmill that USES electricity.

Great thinking outside the box!

Answer 6

I would think that the amount of energy that it would require to run the humans to produce the electricity would be cost prohibitive...food is expensive!

Answer 7

kind of reminds me of the movie "METROPOLIS" but yeha it could work but try this one,, put that wheel in your home, sell it on television as one of those exercise machines and have every one in the home use it for a little each day so that you can produce energy for your personal use, heck , I think ive even seen this done on a show once this guy had a bycicle hooked up so he could watch tv it was pretty neat , why not do it if you can, go for it.

Answer 8

this would probably work. using human sized hamster wheels with generators instead of power plants. but to make it so it doesn't lead to slavery you would have to pay people to do that. plus don't forget that we would probably get tired but it would reduce the amount of fat people.

there are many goods and bads about that but i think it would definately work.

Answer 9

It's not slavery if you pay them minimum wage, just ask Walmart.

Answer 10

well that would only work for college interns, they couldn't get paid......