Friday, July 29, 2011

efficiency

matt and i got to talking about cars and horsepower tonight.  i wondered, how efficient is a horse compared to a car?

we did some very rough calculations: 


a horse and car are about the same. but, a person is way more efficient!

4 comments:

Alicia said...

loving the CR standards, Carol!

Michael said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Michael said...

If a car can move 2600 pounds 30 miles on 130 MJ, that seems rather more efficient than being able to move 160 pounds 10 miles on 8 MJ.

carol said...

that is a good point, michael. it would be more accurate to factor how much it could carry.

i was just thinking in terms of inputs and outputs. but, there is much more output from a car.