Understanding the measure of a watt using the Robert

[mj52]

http://www.wimp.com/cyclist-toaster/

[Sunking]

Well 700 watts is just under 1 HP @ 745 watts.

[mj52]

SK,

Man damn near died making 1 piece of toast. He is built like a clydesdale, a World and Olympic champion, making a single piece of toast almost put him into cadiac arrest.

I now understand what a "Watt" truly represents.

[J.P.M.]

SK,

Man damn near died making 1 piece of toast. He is built like a clydesdale, a World and Olympic champion, making a single piece of toast almost put him into cadiac arrest.

I now understand what a "Watt" truly represents.

One rule of thumb I learned/heard many yrs, ago: an adult man (sorry for the sexism) in decent shape can produce work at the rate of SOMETHING like 1/10 to 1/5 hp, or about 50 to 100 ft-lbf of work/sec on a more/less continuous basis for an hr. or so. But, rules of thumb are most accurate when measuring thumbs and less so for other things.

[Sunking]

SK,

Man damn near died making 1 piece of toast. He is built like a clydesdale, a World and Olympic champion, making a single piece of toast almost put him into cadiac arrest.

I now understand what a "Watt" truly represents.

Good you are learning. He generated 21 watt hours which is less energy than a laptop battery of around 100 watt hours or a 1 pound battery or less than a teaspoon of gasoline. Maybe this will put things into perspective.

1 Kg (2.2 pounds about the size of a marble) of Uranium = 1,680,000 Kg of diesel/gasoline/kerosene/Fat-veggy oil = 3,600,000 Kg of coal, = 5,000,000 Kg of wood = 1,612,400,000 Kg of lithium battery = 1,151,714,286 Roberts (Yep over 1 Trillion Roberts.)

Put another way 20 times the world population to generate as much energy as a marble size piece of Uranium. Working on how many Beer Farts that is but my calculator let the magic smoke out and exploded when I tried. Going to need a CRAY Super computer working for a week to figure that one out.

You know what is really sad? That use to teach that kind of stuff in elementary science and math class. If they still did everyone would know how bogus RE is.

[inetdog]

To be more useful, the discussion should include the energy produced, in Robert-hours, as well as the power in Roberts.
From the looks of Robert after the toaster test, I doubt very much that he could produce more than 1/15 Robert-hour per hour at that degree of difficulty with rest in between.
Note sure what his optimum sustained power output is, but as noted earlier a "normal" conditioned athlete can sustain around .3 Roberts.

From Wikipedia:

When considering human-powered equipment, a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly (see orders of magnitude) and sustain about 0.1 hp indefinitely; trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp briefly[15] and 0.3 hp for a period of several hours.

[max2k]

SK,

Man damn near died making 1 piece of toast. He is built like a clydesdale, a World and Olympic champion, making a single piece of toast almost put him into cadiac arrest.

I now understand what a "Watt" truly represents.

Probably not- making a toast takes energy, 0.021 kWh. Robert managed to produce that amount in about 70 seconds which puts his power output at around 1 000 Watts, notice lack of 'h' at the end: power is the rate of energy per unit of time. It takes Robert's build to achieve that level of power but you can make toaster with much skinnier nerd- just give him enough time . Say you weigh 75 kg so energy required to make a toast is roughly equivalent to the energy necessary to lift yourself to the height of 100 meters. You can walk up that distance in 1 hr or in 1 minute, the amount of energy is the same but the power (and fitness level) would be quite different.

[inetdog]

Probably not- making a toast takes energy, 0.021 kWh. Robert managed to produce that amount in about 70 seconds which puts his power output at around 1 000 Watts, notice lack of 'h' at the end: power is the rate of energy per unit of time. It takes Robert's build to achieve that level of power but you can make toaster with much skinnier nerd- just give him enough time . Say you weigh 75 kg so energy required to make a toast is roughly equivalent to the energy necessary to lift yourself to the height of 100 meters. You can walk up that distance in 1 hr or in 1 minute, the amount of energy is the same but the power (and fitness level) would be quite different.

If you look at the power graph during the toasting, you will see that it peaks at about 700W. The toaster is running at partial power for a longer time. Some would not consider the toast to be adequately toasted.
(Also, the toaster was running less efficiently with two slots energized and only one piece of toast.)

[max2k]

If you look at the power graph during the toasting, you will see that it peaks at about 700W. The toaster is running at partial power for a longer time. Some would not consider the toast to be adequately toasted.
(Also, the toaster was running less efficiently with two slots energized and only one piece of toast.)

Some of the numbers must be off: I just divided total energy they claimed 21Wh = 75,600 joules by the time he was running, about 70 sec in the video which gives a little above 1KW. Prob video was cut out and it took longer in reality. They should've stated the toast requires 700W of power for 108 sec to get the toast ready. You're correct, to get the toast to the proper condition using less power we'd need to slowly charge some battery over longer time and then discharge it to the toaster over 1 minute.