Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as a vivid illustration of how little sustained power a human body produces, even a champion's.
What it is
Olympic track cyclist Robert Forstemann tries to pedal hard enough to power a 700 W toaster and toast a slice of bread. The film frames it as a comparison of how much energy people consume versus how much they can generate.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2015 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends michaelt · 2020-10 · on “Use Your Bike as a Backup to Your Backup Power Supply”
Here's a neat video of an olympic cycle sprinter powering a toaster: [this video] 1800 watt-hours, or 1.8 kilowatt-hours, is 20 cents worth of electricity. Using a cycle to power things makes for a neat demo, and might be good for educating people about electricity and suchlike, but anyone who expects to notice it on their energy bill or carbon footprint, or even for the installation to pay for itself, is off by a few orders of magnitude.
Recommends virtue3 · 2020-10 · on “Use Your Bike as a Backup to Your Backup Power Supply”
that's not a bad sustained! Check this out: olympic (cyclist) sprinter powering a toaster! it's intense. [this video]
Recommends toss1 · 2022-10 · on “Mechanical Induction Cooker (2015)”
Olympic cyclist working to toast a slice of bread. Insanely impressive effort by a maximally trained professional, and he's definitely toasted. This is like a cartoon technology — the general concept is right, but the scale is just waay off... Anyway, worth the look [this video] [LINK]
Cites mcbain · 2015-10 · on “Creator of 5-hour Energy Wants to Power Homes with Bikes”
You can ask people if they want some toast, are they as strong as Robert Förstemann (hint: no, they are not): [this video]
Cites ohyoutravel · 2016-12 · on “Sisyphus’s train set”
Contained in them. It's shocking to see the difference. I saw this video the other day which is relevant. An Olympic cyclist powering a toaster to toast some bread. [this video]
Cites goldenkey · 2018-06 · on “Study confirms lifting weights reduces depression”
It's a common myth that weightlifting only improves strength, not endurance. It is impossible to have strength and lack endurance. The myth comes from the unintuitive disconnect between muscular people and their actual weight - they clearly have to expend more energy to move larger, heavier body parts. So it may seem like their endurance is impaired but it isn't the case. Tell me this power-squatting cyclist lacks endurance: [this video]
Cites rzzzt · 2020-10 · on “Use Your Bike as a Backup to Your Backup Power Supply”
700W continuous output for a few minutes exerted by a professional: [this video] (For mere mortals, it will be indeed closer to 100W.)
Cites codethief · 2022-01 · on “Device wraps around hot surfaces, turns wasted heat to electricity”
> I vaguely recall back in one of my engineering classes we did the math on turning all of the stationary bikes at the gym into power generating units. Very much related: [this video]