Powering the Human Body

In the electrical world we talk a lot about how much power it takes to run things. But have you ever wondered how much power it takes to run YOU? I did the math.

1. Find out the Caloric intake for an average person (number of Calories of energy consumed per day). Say around ~2200 Cal (depends on a LOT of stuff but let's pick a number).

2. Convert to Joules (the standard unit of energy). This gives us 9204800 J.

3. 1 Watt is 1 Joule per second, so divide the number of joules consumed in a day by the number of seconds in a day. 9204800 / 86400 = 107W

So how much does it take to run you? Around 100W.

That's pretty good efficiency, considering what little you can do with 100W of electricity. You could run a light bulb, but little else. In my computer the CPU alone takes 95W. It really makes you think about how amazing our bodies are. Have a great day.