Free energy from the playground

Just got crazy mad idea, as many know motion can change into enegery. What if children playground get some dynamo inserted to make energy. As we know children play hours and everything moves around and also be use to get some little energy out.

What you think cause its pretty easy to find things to insert them like in the hinges of the swing.

Just not sure what the power could be used for. I electric radio with tunes for kids? or a electric game.

What you all think of this idea?

something like this?

Not a new idea. I have personally thought that since my daughter started playing on playgrounds…and something in the back of my head tells me I have heard it somewhere before.

Was just thinking it the other day while my daughter was running around a water park. they had a bunch of spinning wheels from the water. Why not make it a little hydro plant to return a bit of the power to the system that it is pumping the water in the first place.

All of these scemes forget that it takes energy to build the generator, install it and lest we forget service it. Want to see energy drain from a kid, hand them a rake or a lawnmower.

:laughing: It’s one of my personal theories that all of these misdiagnosed cases of kids with ADD are just because parents give their kids an Xbox and a bunch of Koolaid. Want your kid to be less hyper? Send them down into a coal mine or make them paint the house…they’ll be tired in no time. :laughing:

My kids are going to hate me… :smiling_imp:

hi everyone… this is my first posting here but i constantly read…

i just had to reply with this link…

children play on this merry go round and pump well water at the same time!
so coool. :smiley:

http://www.playpumps.org/site/c.hqLNIXOEKrF/b.2589389/k.9958/About_Us__Mission.htm

Main reason to attracts the kids back to the playground. So they don’t stay home and watch tv and play ps3 and xbox360 ( Wii is healthy unless you play too long.)

A generator isn’t needed. Just small dynamo connected a small chipboard and a battery. Cause energy would not be inof to help a house to get in of energy. So the energy can be supplied back to attract the children’s.

And all playgrounds get service by the government this is already done. You don’t want you child to break there neck when they string snaps when they are playing on the swings.

@playpumps
Yeah walk 10 miles with a empty jerry can to play pump the water and walk 10 miles back home with a full jerry can. What do you mean child labor.

Merry go round looks more like turn the big sized wheel to pump.

Merry go round that kids push them self aren’t played that much cause they only want the sit in it and let other make it turn.

A seesaw as a pump is particular possible better. Cause seesaw motion can do allot more then turning motions. And also less energy used by the children cause they use they body weights.

I don’t think kids playing video games is bad, it’s just when they play it too much, nothing in excess is good. What if the playground equipment was hooked up to their xbox or ps3 power supply? An hour of play time = a hour of video game time.

Coming from a kid who grew up on video games (though in a different era) I don’t think video games are bad…but I think that they serve very little purpose nowadays. When I was growing up and first started playing PC video games (my parents would never buy me a Nintendo :frowning:), I would always hack around through game files to see what I could find and learn. That subsequent knowledge taught me computer programming, 3d modelling, photoshop, and all kinds of skills which directly effected and turned me into the designer I am…

With Xbox and Playstation…it’s really more just “shoot things and collect points till your parents tell you to stop”. And in that regard I think they serve very little purpose, especially in todays kids.

That African water pump is a great example. A product like that really manages to provide 2 key benefits (enjoyment for the children and a source of energy for the water pump) in a very smart way.

Not all gamers make mods for games so they learn a bit. I’ve learned photoshop and 3dmax cause of making mods. But there are plenty of lazy people around who just download them and play. And you cannot mod all games.

What I can’t believe are children playing sport on pc or tv only moving there fingers, while they can go outside and do the same and move much more.

Great idea, even if it was just to power the local street lights or park lights. Yo and I did a similar concept for a power generating fitness center that collect the energy from steppers and tread mills. At the time I did a little research with person that had created a stationary bike for generating power and although the system would likely have only created enough energy to power its own building, it is still an interesting line of thought.

in my futurist utopia power generation will be largely devolved to small, unique, feedback type generating sources for local consumption. Kind of like the model of these internet fora and social networking phenomena where all content is provided by consumers. Probably there will always be big power generation to satisfy big business, hospitals, etc.

a average human on a cycle puts out 1/10th of a hp and can only do that for about 1 hour (session lenght on a excercicle varies but 20 min is normal) a stepper would put out slightly less. What this means is your out put per human is 32.5 watt hours per user per machine (750 watt=1 hp) or you would require 3 people grinding away to power one single 100 watt bulb…just dont make sense.

Where you get that stat from?
A healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly and sustain about 0.1 hp indefinitely, and trained athletes can manage up to about 0.3 horsepower for a period of several hours.

Indefinitely doesn’t mean 1 hour.

1hp = 746w.

You need to get the stats correct.

How dare you use such a high power drain lamp. Use CFL bulbs or Led lamps that use much less power and longer lifespan.

I think a playgound designed around a “green” theme like this is a great idea.

There should be some sort of display that indicates how much power is presently being produced, and how much has been produced in total.

You could also give the kids reconfigurable “parts” that they could hook up. Like a wind-generator, solar panels, etc.

You could even turn it into a game, where two teams work to assemble the most efficient power generation setup.

the .1 is hardly “indefiently” more like a hour or so and as ex driector of r and d at precore fittness I know what the average useage of that stuff is, 20 min. 900 W power output of a healthy human (non-athlete) averaged over the first 6seconds of a 30second cycle sprint… 6 SECONDS. If you want to get pissy its 745.7 watt per hp.

Lastly chum here is a bit by royce (phd mech engineer at princton) Take, for example, the sweaty stationary biking session. Royce wanted to give the students a physical sense of how little power they have available to propel any kind of vehicle. He hooked a bicycle to a computer that displayed the rider’s power output in watts, a measurement of how much energy is produced per second. Each of the seven students took a 10-minute turn. Some created spikes of more than 500 watts, but most could produce a sustained output of only 200 watts, which is equivalent to the power consumed by two 100-watt light bulbs. So you might get 200 watts per 10 min session or 275 watts for 20 min if your folk are all healthy collage kids, not over weight middle age people.

For fitness there are more healthy athletes there keeping there body in shape and less people who are overweight. Spinning session you got about 10 or more bikes with professional cyclist making mayor amount of power.

Plus I dont think you can use BHP to calculate the amount of energy that is produced. Cause the spinning or training cycles got gears to change the difficulty of the training and also change the speed that the wheel/dynamo spins.

If there are gear that change the movement for higher speed that makes more cycles are turned in the dynamo and so more energy is produced. And a self-excitation dynamo can produce more energy then a normal bicycle dynamo cause it use a magnetic coil that can produce higher magnetism then a normal piece of magnet.

So there more factors that need to keep in mind to produce energy.

Simple bhp to watts got nothing to do with this. You can’t calculate these things that simple.

hp,ergs,newtons,watts are all expressions of power so yes you can calculate these things with ease.

the 200 watts as expressed in a test is the amount of power that the subject produced…period, gears on the output if anything because of frictional losses reduce actual system power (ever see gearing on a dyno or a water turbine, or any power producing system…no the reason is that gearing no matter how efficent consumes some power though friction).

Gearing is used in vechiles to optimise a power source (motor) output curve to the requirmens or demans of the vechiles operating enviorment a narrow power band motor like a diesle (500-2500 rpm) will have more gears to match its output to the operating enviorment (empty, loaded, flat ground, hills, high/low speeds). A motor with a wider power output (gas) (500-8000 rpm) will need fewer, however for max effiencty such in a raceing car multiple gears are also used to remain in the peak power band.

A human is like a diesle, the cyclic rate or cadence of the legs is quite narrow and so mulitple gear sets are used to maximize the vechiles range of speeds and conditions. The use of gears in “spinning classes” is part a mind game and part it puts a vairialbe low level aerodynamic load on the wheel.

The use of rare earth magnets in your genarator mayl allow you to harvest a higher % of imput power, dont create any more. The higher field strenght and power generation is somewhat offeste by the higher induced magnetic drag (see magnetic brake). This whole thing is called TANSTFAAL"…THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH…check newtons laws.

Your room full of spinners, you have 30 of them all in super good shape and the session is 1 hour you are going to see a total output of less than 6,000 watts how much less is because they for that full hour you are expecting/demanding that they all produce 100% output a full gut buring max effort and that dont happen. Imagine running up a hill as hard as you can being chased by wolves for 1 hour, your going to start out fast (200 watts) and by the time that 59 min is up your at a crawl (20 watts) because of lactic acid build up etc. This is a prime example of why ID’s should at least study some engineering so they dont look like fools to others.

Sport facts. Heart rate monitor for sports. People can only work there heart on 100% briefly. 70% of the max heart rate people can workout 1 hour or more.

So 70% of the maximum power that a human is what a human can produce in a hour or more. Maximum output of a human is 1.2hp for a brief moment. But this calculation don’t ad up you get 0.86something hp out and that should be 70% of your max hp.

Don’t want to do whole math.

A reasonably fit person can expect to maintain between 0.1 and 0.15 HP for a 4-hour period. Elite persons (professional sporters) can produce 0.4 HP for serveral hours.

Also fact about human horse power are wierd stuff. Some things dont even ad up. Plus human are all different there not all the same. The facts and stat should have change by now.

And human legs can do 2 things high speed or strenght. I can cycle high rpm to produce a higherspeed on a low gear. Or lower rpm on a high gear to produce highspeed. A real cyclist use low gear high rpm cause it use less engery to produce higher speed. And a non cyclist don’t know this.

I cycle each day and see people thinking on using the highest gear to go faster while i use low gear and past them easily. I am amateur cyclist do very little competitions and am member of a cycling team. Spinning mostly train to produce higher and better rpm.

Somethings else.
Not rare earth magnets, a electric coil that becomes the magnet. A coil where electricity goes thru that produce a magnetic field. Siemens invention the self-exciting dynamo. Hand driven to let a light bulb glow.
It produce more electricity then a normal earth magnet dynamo do, cause the electric coil magnet can produce a stronger magnetic field.

You dont want to do the math so the point is moot, you dont want to take my years of experiance and knowlage in the field so that is moot too. You cycle…goodie, i used to design them and not just the look of the thing but its biomechanics. You throw out a bunch of numbskull numbers with out atribution to support your theory, well kid they dont wash. Your “reasonalby fit person” model is optimistc as the oringinal proposal was to havest the energy from a bunch of fitness equipment to power a building, not remembering the real duty cycle of your power plant whom are not like gally slaves tied to the excercycle for 4 hours, they do thier work out and leave and statisticly thats 20 min. I know that old nasty math thing again. As to human power being “wierd” its not, its well understood ask any pro trainer. Using heart rate is stupid, your fogetting latic acid build up but hey you have your mind made, and thats ok, so quit yammering about it, spend your own money and prototype a system. When you have prototyped your system send me the data and prove me wrong, becuase kid you will do the math when your money is on the line, not just some cloud kookoo wishful thinking.

happy perpetual motioning.