as i was leaving the gym today i was struck by the senseless waste of people using indoor cardio equipment. all those miles logged on treadmills and elliptical machines; all those flights racked up on stepping machines.
i'm not saying that exercise is a futile endeavor, of course i'm an advocate for being healthy. and it would be hypocritical of me to heap shame upon people who hide indoors instead of enjoying the beauty and the natural challenge of the terrain outside the gym walls.
my despair comes from thinking of the oodles of joules just seeping out into the ether. think about it: people are at the gym to burn calories, right? what are calories but units of energy!
why doesn't someone engineer equipment to harness that mass of energy? during its busy hours, the gym could collect kilowatt hours in a battery and release it during its less busy hours. the battery could power the facility itself.
power from the people!
****
upon further research, this idea isn't really feasible, much to my chagrin. the amount of energy produced wouldn't be enough to run the facility, although it could light up a bulb (CFL, of course) for a few minutes.
1 kilowatt hour = 8,598,452 calories (or roughly 8,598,152 more calories than i burn on a 2 mile run.) the equivalent of 2,456 pounds. that's weight loss on a slightly larger scale (thank God) than my paradigm. my efforts would be closer to producing 1 kilowatt second per week.
eh, in the words of emily litella: "neeeeever mind."
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
channel your energy
