3 HN users recommended this demo2 months2015–2023score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN uses it as a vivid illustration of how little sustained power a human body produces, even a champion's.
Olympic track cyclist Robert Forstemann tries to pedal hard enough to power a 700 W toaster and toast a slice of bread. The film frames it as a comparison of how much energy people consume versus how much they can generate.
“Here's a neat video of an olympic cycle sprinter powering a toaster” (HN, 2020)
Here's a neat video of an olympic cycle sprinter powering a toaster: [this video] 1800 watt-hours, or 1.8 kilowatt-hours, is 20 cents worth of electricity. Using a cycle to power things makes for a neat demo, and might be good for educating people about electricity and suchlike, but anyone who expects to notice it on their energy bill or carbon footprint, or even for the installation to pay for itself, is off by a few orders of magnitude.
Olympic cyclist working to toast a slice of bread. Insanely impressive effort by a maximally trained professional, and he's definitely toasted. This is like a cartoon technology — the general concept is right, but the scale is just waay off... Anyway, worth the look [this video] [link]
Impressive effort showing the scale gap of human power.
Contained in them. It's shocking to see the difference. I saw this video the other day which is relevant. An Olympic cyclist powering a toaster to toast some bread. [this video]
It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. The myth comes from the unintuitive disconnect between muscular people and their actual weight - they clearly have to expend more energy to move larger, heavier body parts. So it may seem like their endurance is impaired but it isn't the case. Tell me this power-squatting cyclist lacks endurance: [this video]
Powerlifting cyclist as counterexample to the endurance myth.
> I vaguely recall back in one of my engineering classes we did the math on turning all of the stationary bikes at the gym into power generating units. Very much related: [this video]
Reminds me of the toaster challenge video[1] where Robert Förstemann, German track cyclist, powers a 700 Watt toaster for over a minute on an exercise bike. Absolutely insane. [1]: [this video]
Track cyclist powers a 700 W toaster for over a minute.
There was a video a few years ago in which a professional cyclist is connected to a generator (bike included) and their continuous power output was around 100 W which they could maintain for a few hours. But it would be unreasonable to expect this amount of exertion from an untrained person. Edit: weeeelll. I'm either thinking of a different one or completely messed up the numbers and duration: [this video]
Vaguely recalled video of a cyclist's sustained power output.
Obligatory cyclist powering a toaster with their bonkers thighs: [this video] IMO people often don't take the time to think about energy enough. By some quick math, I've found that the energy taken out of one 0 degree celsius ice cube to make it freeze (latent heat of fusion) is roughly equal to the energy in a ubiquitous AA battery. About 4 watt hours
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