Turn Sweat into Power-Grid Energy- is it Practical?

Workout cycle from PlugOut, a supplier of exercise equipment that turns your sweat into electricity.

The last time I was at the gym walking on the treadmill, I looked around and saw dozens of people sweating away, running, climbing stairs and pedaling bikes, all under the bright lights and cooling air conditioner breeze. And I thought, wouldn’t it be great to turn all this sweat energy into electricity that could power the gym and maybe return something to the grid?

We could turn gyms into power plants. You pay the gym and they sell your sweat-generated electricity to the power grid. I wasn’t  the first person to have this brilliant idea. There are now dozens of gyms around the US that have implemented this idea and a number of vendors who supply modifications to existing gym equipment that convert your sweat into electricity.

But, the value is not in the electricity generated, it’s in the idea behind it. Just put in the numbers.

You can buy from the Bicycle Sports Shop, among others, a sensor that will measure the power you expend in riding a bike. They offer a handy table with a few numbers for the typical power that a human can generate.

Two numbers are of interest. The peak power is the average power over a 1 minute interval of sprinting. The functional threshold is the average power that can be sustained over a 1 hour period. These are power per kilogram of body weight. You take your weight in pounds and divide by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms.

Suppose you weight 220 pounds. This is 100 kg. A trained athlete can generate about 6 watts/kg x 100 ~ 600 watts over an hour. One of us mere mortals could generate about 200 watts, or about 0.2 kilowatts of power. For reference, this is about 1/4 horsepower.

Energy costs around the US vary but a reasonable starting place is about $0.1 per kW-hour, or 1 cent per 100 watt-hours of energy.

This means that a person working out might be able to generate about 200 watt-hours of energy in an hour of hard and steady workout at the value of 2 cents. If you have a room of 50 people all sweating for an hour, the value generated would be about $1.

This revenue stream is just not a viable business plan. However, if you had a choice between going to two different clubs, one that you just sweated at, and one at which you sweated, but knew that each drop of precious sweat generated some, even tiny amount of electricity that was put to good use, which club would you want to go to?

When competition between gyms becomes more fierce, small differentiators can be large deciding factors. I think the clubs that offer to turn your sweat into generated electricity will become more popular, even though the amount of electricity generated is trivial. It would be about enough to power the LCD screen of the TV you watch.

The ROI for a gym is not in the revenue generated by the electricity generated, but in the additional number of user who would be attracted to sign up if they knew their energy was being put to good use.

In addition, an exercise machine set up to generate electrical power is also instrumented to display the power generated. This is yet another metric that you can use for feedback to help you feel better about your workout.

And after all, isn’t a large part of working out about feeling better about yourself?

Electrical power generating gyms will not become the power plants of the Matrix anytime soon, but they will make you feel a little better.

The Earliest Influences that Launched Me On My Life Paths

I was invited to talk to a group of six-graders on what influenced me when I was their age, to launch me on the path I followed through life. This gave me an excuse to reflect on what stands out now as important then.

In hindsight, I think there were three things: I had a few simple toys which created an itch to know why, the space program and science fiction books and shows.

My mother used to sew a lot. She had this small but powerful magnet she would use to pick up pins. I was fascinated by it. I noticed it would pick up some pins, but not others. Why? How did it work?

She also had a magnifying glass she would use to check her sewing. I was drawn to how it was able to magnify objects. When I asked her, how did it work, she said it was special kind of glass, but I knew she didn’t have a clue.

I played with these two objects endlessly when I was nine years old. I wanted to know how and why they did their tricks.

Then my god father, Leo, who worked at Sperry Gyroscope, showed me a model gyroscope. Once spinning, it has got to be the most bizarre mechanical device ever. It behaves counter-intuitively. The spin axis of the rotor never moves, however the frame is rotated. If you push on the spinning axis, it rotates 90 degrees to the direction of motion. Why does it do this?

These three devices started me on my path to question and created that thirst to want to know why. It is an itch I am still scratching.

Then came the space program around this time. Some kids have posters of sports stars on their walls. I had pictures of astronauts, like Ed White, in a space walk, on my walls. I wrote away to NASA and got back 8 x 12 inch glossy photos of rocket launches, astronauts in space and space capsules parachuting to the ocean. I sat transfixed in seventh grade, watching the first man walk on the moon.

To this day, I still keep pictures of space ships on my wall.

The last important influence in my early years was a book my fifth grade teacher read us in class, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I was hooked on tesseracts and the possibility of warping space time to travel to the stars. 

This was quickly followed by Robert Heinlein’s Have Space Suit Will Travel. It was the first science fiction book I can remember reading myself. I still remember the day I discovered the science fiction section of our local public library and pulled this book from the shelf.

I then proceeded to read every science fiction book in the library and many more since then.

I inhaled Star Trek and every other science fiction show and movie in the 1960’s and 1970’s in parallel with my science explorations. Even my first science fiction novel, Shadow Engineer, shows an influence in its themes from these two books.

When I look back now that I am 55, a successful physicist in the electronics industry, author of seven technical books and one science fiction book, I see that I have been trying to scratch that same itch to know why, that started when I was nine years old.

A Moment of Tranquility in the Singapore Changi Airport

 

Experience an oasis of peace and calm communing with the butterflies, in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the world.

Fly High, Swim Deep

The signature line of Curt Hillfon, Swedish artist, 1943-

“Whatever you do, do it well,” Curt Hillfon told me. “If you are a bird, fly high. If you are a fish, swim deep.”

Could this be the Ideal Breakfast?

A bowl of instant oatmeal with a handful of blueberries could be one of the healthiest breakfasts to eat. It’s a great trade off between low calorie, filling, quick and easy and it’s probably pretty good for you.

 

The Best BBQ Chicken in the World

The best BBQ chicken in the world is “beer in the butt” chicken. I heard about this way of cooking chicken on a grill many years ago, tried it and was hooked. Apparently, I am not the only one. I did a Google search and found more than 16,000,000 entries for beer in the butt chicken on the web.

Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?

Sometimes it doesn’t matter if an urban legend is true or not if it sounds cute. This possibly made up story was reported here, and has made its way around the web multiple times. If you’re a geek, it’s worth a quick read.

Top Shelf Astronomy 201 Courses

Looking for an astronomy class a little beyond the basics, but not requiring a PhD and taught by the experts? Here are four recommendations that are “out of this world.”

 

Life Is Too Short To Drink Cheap Wine

For 35 years, I’ve occasionally drunk wine. For most of this time, I didn’t have much of a discriminating pallet, even with a few casual wine tasting classes and visits to wineries.

And then I had a chance to sample a glass of Silver Oak Cabernet. This was a $70 bottle of wine. After this glass, I realized there was a qualitative difference in a $70 bottle of wine from the usual $7.99 wine I used to drink. Sometimes paying extra for a great bottle of wine is worth it.

Since then, I’ve tried to pay attention to wine and taken the opportunity to keep track of the ones I like. It’s all about price range and quality.

For under $10, my favorites are:

• Chardonnay: Chateau St. Michelle
• Pinot Noir: Gallo Reserve
• Shiraz: Yellow Tail

For ~$25:

• Cabernet: Simi
• Pinot Noir: Castle Rock Russian River Reserve
• Chardonel: Reserve, Stonehill

And then when I really want to splurge, for $50-$70 its

Cabernet: Silver Oak

Merlot: Grgrich

As a special note, Grgrich is the winery that put California Chardonay’s on the map. The 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, crafted by Mike Grgich, took first place at the famed “Paris Tasting” in 1976, beating France’s best white Burgundies.

The entertaining fictional movie Bottle Shock, was based on this earth shaking event.

With these price points and favorites in mind, I like to compare new wines, always looking for ones that beat my current favorites. That’s often the fun part of visiting wineries to taste their offerings- the possibility of discovering a new favorite.

If you have a recommendation, let me know!

A Perspective from Picasso

Picasso was on a long train ride, on one of those trains that has seats facing each other. Across from him sat a man who recognized him, but said nothing for a good 30 minutes, and then began mumbling to himself, “don’t like it. ….can’t understand it….shouldn’t be allowed…”

After a few of these comments, Picasso interrupted him and asked him, “What are you talking about?”

The man said, “Modern art. It’s too abstract. I don’t understand it, Galleries shouldn’t show it.”

“What should they show?” Picasso asked.

“Realism. They should show reality, the way the world really is.”

“Give me an example,” Picasso asked, and the man pulled out his wallet and showed a picture of his wife. “This is a picture of my wife. This is realism. This is how the real world is.”

Picasso looked at it, turning it over and said, “My, she’s awfully small, …and awfully flat.”

New Spin on an Old Poem for Amateur Astronomers

"Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house… "  is the way the classic poem by Major Henry Livingston Jr. 1748 – 1828,  begins. Over the years, 849 variations have been created each with different spins and Matthew Monroe has complied everyone of them.

Some are about Chanukah, like:
Twas the month after Chanukah, and all through the house
Nothing would fit me, not even a blouse.
The cookies I’d nibble, the latkas I’d taste
At Chanukah parties had gone to my waist.

Some are about computers, like:
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a peripheral was stirring, not even a mouse;
The modem was hung by the keyboard with care
In hopes that a download soon would be there.

But my favorite of all is about amateur astronomers. This version is credited to Jane Houston Jones of San Rafael, CA, which she wrote on Dec 21, 2002. She calls it

"The Week Around Solstice"
by Jane Houston Jones

Hacking a Cat Box to Last Two Weeks Between Emptying

We have three cats. Two of them, 9 year old males, are at least 15 pounds and the third, a 2 year old female, that weights only 8 pounds, eats (and poops) like she is 15 pounds.

That’s a lot of cat litter each day that needs disposal. Ideally, I want an automatic cat box that I don’t have to clean out for weeks at a time, doesn’t make a mess, never needs maintenance and the cats can use effortlessly. I accept the fact that I will have to add kitty litter every so often.

University Astronomy 101 in Your Pocket

Now that you have discovered how much you love astronomy, do you regret not paying attention in your college classes, or kick yourself for not even taking an Astronomy class when you had the chance?

It’s not too late. In fact, you can listen and view Astronomy 101 classes from some of the top universities or listen to invited lectures by the scientists who are making the great discoveries we read about each day. Best of all, it’s completely free, and you can take it with you on your iPod or iPhone. A new world of learning is available to you at iTunesU.

All you need is a computer and internet access. Download Apple’s completely free iTunes program for the Mac or the PC. Go to the iTunes store and click on iTunesU listed on the left hand menu.

“We Broke It, Now We Own It!”

In the summer of 2009, we caught five raccoons over a period of about a month using a live trap. I would shove the trap and raccoon in the back on my car, drive it two miles and across a freeway to a lake with acres of wilderness and release it. These were five fewer creatures to eat Susan’s garden on our upper deck.

After setting the trap with a piece of chicken one night, I came down to the patio the next morning to find that instead of catching a raccoon, we caught a kitten. This cat could fit in the palms of two hands held together.

What Drives a Writer?

Somewhere along my travels, I heard the following story that captures the essence of what drives a writer.

How to Nap by Maxwell and Schrodinger

	Schrodinger points out that when you nap style doesn’t count. Comfort is everything. His white moustache is showing.
	Schrodinger illustrates sleeping position #8, nose to nose with a friend. In this case, our friend Rachel.
	Schrödinger shows that if you can’t find a friend to sleep with, a brother will do. This is documented proof that there was a time when both of these now 15 pound cats could fit in this tiny cat bed.
	Here, Susan illustrates that if you fall asleep for more than more than 35 seconds you are liable to wake up with a cat in your lap.
	Of course, Schrodinger discovers the best of all worlds- getting to sleep with Mom and his brother, Maxwell.

The Vertical Wine Tasting at Stone Hill Winery

In a horizontal wine tasting, you sample different types of wines from different grapes, possibly from different wineries and from different years. You are sampling a shotgun variety of sometimes wildly varying textures, aromas and flavors in the hopes of uncovering a gem among rocks.

In a vertical tasting, you sample the same wine from the same grape and the same winery, but over different years. The only difference in the wine you taste is the year. This is a unique opportunity to experience how a specific wine ages and how the specific growing and harvesting conditions of each year affect the quality of the wine.

Last Man on the Moon Speaks at Linda Hall Library

Harrison Schmitt, the last man to walk on the moon, spoke to a full house at the Linda Hall Library on Sept 2, 2009, as part of the “To the Moon and to the Planets Beyond” lecture series.

Schmitt left the moon on December 14, 1972 as part of the Apollo 17 mission. He was the only geologist to visit the moon, receiving a PhD in Geology from Harvard. And as the only non military and non professional test pilot among the Apollo crews, much to the consternation of the NASA controllers on earth, he was prone to falling while hunting rocks on his moon walks. In this photo, his suit is covered in moon dust from his close up encounters.

Summer Science Camp for Big Kids

If you missed out on summer camp as a kid, as I did, it’s not too late. But this time, you don’t have to rough it.

For the last few years, I’ve attended various star parties during the summer. These are gatherings of enthusiastic amateur astronomers (not all of whom are Geeks) who get together for a few nights during a new moon with telescopes, campers and tents, to look at the stars and share the sky. They typically span 3-5 days.

Daytime is pretty casual with some events for kids, but mostly time to sit back, read, sleep and chat with folks. Most star parties also schedule a professional astronomer or scientist to speak after dinner. Night time is the time to bring out your scope and observe.

 

Rephrase the Political Debate: Goals, Strategies, then Tactics

 I am tired of listening to political debate in the media today. Both the politicians and the media interviewing and reporting on them have it all wrong. The fundamental problem is that the discussions are all focused on the wrong issues.

Anyone who has ever taken a project management class or who has the slightest experience in running a successful project to completion knows that project success is based on the articulation of the goals, strategies and tactics and their implementation.

You start with the goals, then develop the strategies to get there, then the tactics to implement the strategies. The entire team must buy into the same set of goals, strategies and tactics. You have to start at the top and get agreement on the goals, then agreement on the strategies, then agreement on the tactics. That is the only successful way of completing a project.

Single-handed Camper Hitch Hook-up

When you are all alone in the middle of the wilderness, how do you hook-up a camper to your car’s hitching ball?

If the camper is not secured, you will be stranded in the middle of nowhere. I found a simple method, using a web cam dangling from the back of the car and viewing its image of the hitching post on my laptop resting on the front seat.

I used to camp in my tent when I visited the dark sky site of the Astronomical Society of Kansas City, in Butler , MO. While this was cheap, it was always a bit of a hassle, both in the set up and the tear down.

Life Long Learning at Your Fingertips

I’ve never given up my thirst for learning more about what interests me in the world. I went to school in Cambridge, MA, where there are 30 large universities in the area, each with weekly talks and seminars. I used to hop from seminar  to seminar, eating the free cookies and cakes and listening to the distinguished visitors from around the world.

With the web and my iPod, I can access the same quality speakers who are expert on almost any subject imaginable, but with the convenience of my schedule. I’ve found three important sources for incredibly great learning.

Local Artist Finds His Artistic Calling

“It is so great to find your creative self at 40,” Keith Anderson says. In the last five years, he has taken what started as a Christmas present for his three-year old nephew and turned it into an art career.

Anderson has taken up the rare skill of creating paintings in paper. This is not the traditional painting with paints on paper. Rather, he uses colored paper pulp as the medium itself. His pieces range from landscapes to abstract modern art to impressionist style, each composed with delicately sculpted dyed paper pulp, dried and ironed into a sheet of raw paper.

Making Career Path Decisions

Last year, the convergence of two events gave me reason to articulate my recommendations on how to decide on a career path.

Our niece stayed with us for more than a year and we watched her struggle trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life.  Anyone who is over 50 years old has gone through this process at least twice, and sometimes more than that.

For more than 20 years,  I have been an MIT education councilor, interviewing high school students who apply to MIT. This last year, I encountered a few students who didn’t have a clue what that wanted to do in life and asked for some advice.

Here’s what I tell them:

Engineer Has New Insight on Power Lines and Cancer Link

“There is a suspected correlation to 60 Hz electric fields from power lines and leukemia in children,” Dr Robert Ashley, a retired electrical engineering professor told a meeting of the IEEE on Monday, October 16, 2000 in Overland Park, KS.

Ashley, a former professor at the University of Kansas at Lawrence and University of Colorado at Denver, now retired, has spent most of the last 10 years investigating the power line and cancer connection. He addressed a lunchtime audience of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (IEEE) at the Wyndham Garden Hotel in Overland Park.

The first epidemiological study to show a weak but positive link between overhead high voltage power lines and heath risks was reported by Wertheimer and Leeper in 1979, Ashley said.

Reviewing data taken in the Denver area, they found a three times higher rate of cancer death for children living near power lines compared to living in random locations. From this analysis, they concluded a possible link between magnetic fields and health risks.

Since then, though hundreds of similar studies have been conducted, searching for a link between magnetic fields from power lines and increased health risks, only one other study, conducted in Sweden, has shown any other positive correlation. Ashley thinks he knows why.

“Every study conducted, has tried to correlate health risks to the magnetic fields from the power lines. There is no correlation to any magnetic field effect, because it’s the electric field!” Ashley said.