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Check It Out
CHECK IT OUT
Energy from
Muscle Power
Did you know that you are a small power plant? This is true
because your body is able to produce energy from the food
you eat. An average adult needs around 1,000 kilowatt hours
(kWh) of energy per year. Ninety percent of this is needed to
keep the body functions running, especially to keep the body
temperature at approximately 98.6 °F (37 °C). So there are
around 100 kWh left to do other activities. You can see in
the table below what you can do with 1 kWh.
We use the energy our bodies generate from food for
everything we do — playing sports, tidying up our
bedrooms, and for just moving around. Our muscles convert this energy
into kinetic energy, which is the energy of motion. Whether we're cycling,
skateboarding, swimming, or running, we are using our muscles to move.
The models in this experiment kit also use your muscular strength to move. But
what's really cool is that your muscle strength does not directly trigger the
movement of the models. Rather, the energy is first stored up by the winding up
of the spring motor and then simply released at the push of a button. When the
spring unwinds, the stored energy is slowly released again into motion. But the
energy originally came from you, when you wound up the spring.
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