Naked Science Forum

General Discussion & Feedback => Radio Show & Podcast Feedback => Topic started by: thedoc on 20/09/2014 15:32:14

Title: Turn chewing and chatting into energy
Post by: thedoc on 20/09/2014 15:32:14

Use your chatterbox co-workers to power the entire office's electronics...

Read the whole story on our  website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/news/news/1000562/)

  

Title: Re: Turn chewing and chatting into energy
Post by: alancalverd on 19/09/2014 20:08:46

The fact that the inventors call themselves scientists is beyond comprehension. The law of conservation of energy is fundamental to every science.

The human body is one of the least efficient energy converters imaginable. You consume about 10 megajoules per day from food, and the average human can at best do about 360 kJ of useful work in a day - 3.6% conversion efficiency. So if you need another 100W of electricity  to power your computer for an 8 hour day, you will need to eat another 80 megajoules (19,000 Calories) of food. Alas, there isn't enough food in the world to do this - most people are living on less than a tenth of that amount already.

Title: None
Post by: armen on 03/10/2014 02:36:09

I guess the point is that they want to power hearing aids, so this looks more like 1mW power rather 100W. Just a few order of magnitudes below what you mention, alcancalverd.