Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?
The Toaster Challenge3 HN recommenders · 2015–2023
24.4M views · demo · evergreen · Uploaded 2015-06-03
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.
HN uses it as a vivid illustration of how little sustained power a human body produces, even a champion's.
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12 comments from Hacker News
You can ask people if they want some toast, are they as strong as Robert Förstemann (hint: no, they are not): [VIDEO]
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. [VIDEO]
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: [VIDEO]
700W continuous output for a few minutes exerted by a professional: [VIDEO] (For mere mortals, it will be indeed closer to 100W.)
Here's a neat video of an olympic cycle sprinter powering a toaster: [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.
that's not a bad sustained! Check this out: olympic (cyclist) sprinter powering a toaster! it's intense. [VIDEO]
> 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: [VIDEO]
Reminds me of the toaster challenge video[1] where Robert Förstemann, German track cyclist, powers a 700 Watt toaster for over a minute on an exercise bike. Absolutely insane. [1]: [VIDEO]
Olympic track cycling medallist powers toasting a slice of bread, which takes everything he's got and leaves him exhausted: [VIDEO]
Obligatory cyclist powering a toaster with their bonkers thighs: [VIDEO] IMO people often don't take the time to think about energy enough. By some quick math, I've found that the energy taken out of one 0 degree celsius ice cube to make it freeze (latent heat of fusion) is roughly equal to the energy in a ubiquitous AA battery. About 4 watt hours
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 [VIDEO] [LINK]
There was a video a few years ago in which a professional cyclist is connected to a generator (bike included) and their continuous power output was around 100 W which they could maintain for a few hours. But it would be unreasonable to expect this amount of exertion from an untrained person. Edit: weeeelll. I'm either thinking of a different one or completely messed up the numbers and duration: [VIDEO]