If I were to have the know-how necessary to store energy produced by a hamster wheel while the hamster/mouse is running in it, how much energy could be stored? What kind of things could I use that energy for?
Let’s assume the hamster runs for 2 hours a day.
Follow up question, what about a human on an exercise bike?
Image by cdrussorusso
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The hamster has a mass of 100 grams. The wheel has a radius of 10 cm ( thats a very big hamster wheel ). The maximum torque the hamster can generate is m.g.r = 0.1 . 10 . 0.1 = 0.1 Nm
If it can run at 1 rev per second…. rather quick ( one rev per 3 secs is more likely )
Thats 7200 revs in two hours
Work done = torque . angular distance moved = 0.1 . 2 . ? . 7200 = 4500 Joules
Which is power production at 0.63 watts.
If your phone is about 10 watts ( I’m guessing here – I don’t have a cell phone ) then your two hours of hamster running ( assuming 100% efficiency ) would power your phone for 7 and a half minutes.
Hmmmmm…..lots of hamsters needed.
I’m going to bed.. you can work out the human one – just more of the same with different numbers.
A human on an exercise bike will have a sustainable output of around 100-400 Watts depending on their fitness and how long they have to keep it up. So, two hours would result in 720-2880 kilojoules of energy. However, human muscles only work at around 25% efficiency, so you’d have to feed your person four times that amount in food to prevent them wasting away.