I saw this thread elsewhere.... I thought I would add something to it. a bicycle powered house, even with VERY efficient fixtures, etc (assuming you want the thing heated, cooled, etc. all those power hungry things a house does) and some modern conveniences (like refrigeration for food) well, it just, it doesn't scale well, a bicycle powered complex (think castle, with a common kitchen, whatever, would work better, but on a small scale, jsut, totally unworkable, fridges are too inefficient, even by themselves, too much unlived in space in a single, or even single family living arrangement) that being said bicycle powered appliances are a fantastic idea. you would have to pick and choose which appliances you powered that way so that your loss of calories did not exceed whatever you were trying to do (I mean, you're pedalling to power a toaster, because you are hungry, you pedal so much that the toast is insufficient to fill you, and you either make a bad nutrition decision, need more toast, or waste energy seeking a different method) so, there is planning that would need to go into it. it is possible to make a bicycle powered television (on a small scale) and of course, that would be very effective for some people, it even works with a CRT (which could assist with recycling) {btw, this is why I don't flesh out ideas, people don't want that either}
I think that would be awesome. Not that I know a lot about this sort of thing, but I've heard that clothing may be able to function as a solar panel for portable electronic equipment in the future.
Actually, in the last NASA tech newsletter thing I got (summary of the research they're doing, and the papers they're publishing regarding tech, also a shit load of white sheets, or whatever those things are called, I should know this term, but I don't care just this moment) they're doing some research on paper batteries, like... The ink, reacts with the paper, to work as both a solar panel and a battery, but the ink can also change from black to white, so, if they can work out a way to imbed data into the paper (which they have, it's just getting the whole system to work together, and be cheap) we'll have tech enabled harry potter style newspapers. (newspapers with touchscreens one sheet thick, moving pictures, and scrollable columns....) I didn't want to use the harry potter reference, but I don't have faith in my WHOLE audience (I do have faith in you andrew, and many of the people here, but it's the fastest cultural recognition for the end product of this sort of tech)
You must realize I can no longer trust you when you say things like that. Anyway...I hope that somebody with real technological savviness enters this thread and adds something with more substance. I am very interested in all of this though.
I would have said minority report, but that movie sucked worse than harry potter, and the newspaper was only on screen for, maybe ten seconds, and tom cruise, REALLY sucks. Plus the "paper" there was plastic, and they aren't using plastic, but paper (it's cellulose and everything)
ha ha, I had to write a review for 'Minority Report' in high school. I opened with something along the lines of: "'Save the Children' appears to have been the recurring theme in all Stephen Spielberg films since "The Colour Purple"'.
and jews... don't forget jews.... (this is not a racist comment, there is a lot of ww2\jew stuff in his films, predictably, as he is jewish....) the experiencing other peoples memories aspect intrigued me a bit, but they just left that lying there. also, intrusive marketing was present, but underdeveloped as a concept, could have been a very much deeper interesting movie, and failed. back to basic concept, in amalgam with other technologies, the bike hose could work very well, also, the battery paper. imagine if you had a book that turned it's own pages with a tap (it's a 900 page repository of novels, on ten pages, you can slip it in your coat pocket) they're also tooling around with solid state non volatile data storing capacitors, that can be rewritten (each of those things is special, all of them in combination is quite amazing, and the ability to use that in something like one of these books would be fantastic) you would be able to use your memory as your battery, and if you wanted it to be stable, you could, if you needed to replace it, you could, so, new books when you needed them, fuck the kindle. also, would be great for data that needs to be kept secure, for a lot of reasons independent, but, that doesn't matter either.
This sounds like way too much work. We use a LOT of electricity and any way you crunch the numbers a bicycle is inefficent. Solar power that turns a turbine that charges batteries and/or capacitors. If you make the turbine like the price is right wheel, all it would take is one good push every five minutes or so and it would spin very fast. or just a giant nuclear reactor on antarctica to power the whole world. FTW
it would be awesome to have a appliance with a stationary bike.. Simple componants can be easily fitted.. im confident that with basic knowledge of electricity a person could build one.. I want a wind generator, but atm the money isnt there for it to spend.. $$ is this issue with many a project for just about everyone..
some PVC, a motor from a free treadmill off craigslist, and a high place to stick it. if that's a money issue you're in trouble.
what i was thinking is that when the sun goes down, the flywheel thing keeps spinning, thus still generating electricity. just an idea. im not michio kaku and cannot harness zero point energy.
the flywheels mass would have to be so great for that to work that you may as well live in the flywheel...... the amount of solar cells you'd need to get a flywheel that large moving would far exceed the number you'd need to just provide you power. (i.e. batteries trump flywheel) and the flywheel would have to be that enormous because the generation of power provides resistance (the more power you crank out of a generator, the more resistance you get) each step you add (flywheel, second generator AFTER photoelectric cells) decreases efficiency by an order of magnitude or so. i.e. your idea is crazy. charming, but crazy.
even if the flywheel was magnetically suspended in midair and sealed in a vacuum? with a pivot point that has .000000000000000000000000000000000000001 friction?
Carbohydrate fuel... We don't use horses for transportation for the same reason we don't use treadmills to power our homes. Inefficient. Although when I become a mogul, having a house powered by Burmese models sounds fun.
Bikes are useful on a small scale because americans are fatasses, and many are pedalling on stationary bikes anyway, that's why I discussed the point of scale in the first post. Yes, the electromagnetic resistance of generating electricity would fuck it up also, such a flywheel would require much more energy to remain suspended than it could generate. There is a limit to the power usable from naturally occurring magnets, and even then, I suspect that being inside, or in close proximity with a generator, would produce a strongly conflicting electromagnetic field. Regardless your solution is untenable. And I still am not sure if you are joking or not.
