Thanks, Joe, for following up on my question. Please see my comments below.
On Fri, 8 Mar 2002 19:26:18 Joseph B. Reid wrote: ... >The following item in this morning's Gloobe and Mail may explain the >mystery. It says: >"A worker doing hard physical labour all day--or a felon turning a >treadmill--can put out about 100 watts of power. That's the output, in the >form of a little light and a lot of heat, of the familiar light bulb," >writes Steven Vogel in Natural History magazine. "What about the fuel? We >are at best only about 25 per cent efficient, so an output of 100 watts >requires a minimum input of 400 watts... > Hmm... That would make sense. Actually it seems like it's the only explanation for the mistery. I wish one could find somewhere how one could find out what level of efficiency one works at. Fine if that would depend on the type of activity, sex, age, etc. I still believe though that it should be possible for one to ascertain how much power/energy one really spends when doing some physical activity. >Does that explain the reading of your wife's bike machine? Was the maker of >the machine trying to show the body thinning power of the machine in terms >of the food input required to support the energy needed in pedaling? >... I'd say that potentially yes. It looks like these machines are setup to provide "real" energy expenditures based on the specific activity involved. On the other hand it's possible that when it comes to the power component of that reading, the device would simply provide you with the specific output coming out of the device. Unfortunately though, that figure is utterly useless if one is interested in tiing that to how much energy you're actually consuming, so to speak. Interesting to comment that my treadmill provides 2 readings, one "fat calorie" and one "calorie" reading. They evidently differ by some factor of 4 or something (I haven't spent the time to find out how they would relate to each other). In any case, despite your insights, Joe, my question remains unanswered, since I'm still after a *real* power output, so that with it I could calculate how much energy I actually spent during some exercising routine. But thanks anyways. Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
