Most people are bored because either they are jobless or they are in prison. But biological energy can be converted to electricity if we make them turn dynamos to generate electricity. Would the numbers add up with a prison, where the inmates generate electricity to cover the county the prison is in? That way their time would not be a waste but a productive contribution to society. How much electricity could they generate? What are your opinions?
Given the small amount of free time they have...what's left after body building, watching those big screen tv's, working their drug deals, sodomizing their fellow prisoners, they may be capable of cranking out a .05 nanowatt,
Politics and personal attacks aside, conservation of energy also applies to humans. Anyone doing hard physical work requires to eat more to compensate for all the lost energy during work. Unfortunately, food is rather rare and costly when compared to other sources of chemical energy like fossil fuels.
Ah! But you could get them coming and going so to speak because the increased intake would lead to an increased output. What with methane converters for the ahem, "night soil" degradation and an effective method of capturing natural methane emissions at the source so to speak (which if implemented correctly would reduce the whole sodomy thing) then you might have a viable system...............................
There is a standard calculation for basic metabolism rate at this site: http://www.bmi-calculator.net/bmr-calculator/ That will give a result in Kcal used in a day. Watts measure power, Kcal measures energy. You are looking for power, so Watt-hours is an acceptable conversion. 1 KCal = 1.163 watt-hour So you multiply the result of your BMR from the link by 1.163 to get watt-hours. My calculation generated just under 2500 watt-hours, or approximately 100 watts/hour. I could power a light bulb!
That's a bit misleading, because that is the amount of energy you consume just by living your normal life. If you're talking about using human energy for useful work, a top athlete can generate about 1/2 horsepower (375 Watts) for brief periods. The average fit adult could manage about 250 Watts for brief periods. For long-term, hours per day kind of work, it's much lower. Studies in the early 20th century showed that an average 35-year old man could produce about 0.1 hp (75 Watts) over an 8-hour shift, or 600 Watt-hours per day of useful work. But that's not free energy, because in order to produce that energy you have to feed the worker more. And humans are not very efficient engines: only about 20% of the calories you feed a human being will become available as actual work. So to get that 600 Watt-hours, you have to feed that worker 3000 Watt-hours of food, or 2580 kcalories. In other words, you have to nearly double the worker's food intake.
Thanks for all the data and the analysis. Isn't it disappointing how useless we people are in every respect to our productive capabilities? Also, I guess there is no redemption then for prisoners to get saved from their boredom and so more crimes in prison.
Uhh, yeah, sure. What a shame we weren't designed to be hooked up to a generator. Ever think that turning a crank for hours a day might get boring, too? Guess they'll have to keep doing "nonproductive" things like making all our liscense plates.
If you want my wife's opinion, she would say that I generate enough natural gas (sic) to power everything east of the Mississippi.
I thought it was an horrifying idea. If global corp get "wind" (yes Ed, that again) of this concept, they will be using us all as a power supply.
I have heard that cattle cause global warming with their farts. Not that I believe it, but it does seem to imply that cattle would be good methane producers. You all can stick tubes up your asses if you want, but that would be a personal choice. Larger animals would obviously produce more energy. As to the whole idea of using muscle power to generate electricity, people are not as strong as, say, apes because much more of our food energy goes to brainpower rather than muscle power. Hence we are inefficient when it comes to turning cranks for energy. But why not use the energy that we do have instead? Mentally engaging prisoners would be more productive, reduce recidivism by releasing thinking people rather than mind-numbed robots, and be much less boring than mindless labor.
Look at the bright side, when you get no more credit to buy food, your new internal fuel cells may keep you alive/warm for one more day. Being a productive member of society? What do you produce? Can I produce a little power? The question is, if we become their power source, will they still want what they have from us now?
This is inspirational. I have now been thinking for a while what mentally challenging activities we could invent for them. Here is my idea. Let's make every prisoner read the Bible backwards. A voice recognition software would listen and check if they made a reading error, then make them restart from the end all over again. When a prisoner arrives back at the front of the Bible for the 7th time, we reduce 1 year off his sentence. What's your opinion?
