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How many horsepowers are humans?

nuttynutskin

nuttynutskin

Bluelighter
Joined
May 15, 2011
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I'm crazy so I have a lot of interesting thoughts that come to me here and there... Well anyways I was riding my bike and started thinking is there a way to determine in a person how much horsepower they are? If only going by size a riding horse is about 1000lbs on average, and the average American male would be maybe 180lbs? So that would mean a horse is about 6x the size of a human rounded up. Anyways, without getting in to more specifics would it even be possible to determine?
 
1 hp = 746 watts.
550 foot-pounds per second is approximately equivalent to 745.7 watts.
One metric horsepower is needed to lift 75 kilograms (avg. body weight of a person) by 1 meter (3.28 feet) in 1 second.
a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly
trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp briefly
I agree nuttynutskin you are crazy ! hope that answers your "crazy question"
 
this has already been answered (quite nicely :) ).
id only like to add that this is also quite easy to measure, and some stationary (training) bikes (the kind they use in gyms for instance) offer this measurement out of the box, so it s not that hard to determine...
 
silas GUY said:
1 hp = 746 watts.
550 foot-pounds per second is approximately equivalent to 745.7 watts.
One metric horsepower is needed to lift 75 kilograms (avg. body weight of a person) by 1 meter (3.28 feet) in 1 second.
a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly
trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp briefly
I agree nuttynutskin you are crazy ! hope that answers your "crazy question"
Click to expand...

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Well, in 1974 Gordy Ainsleigh ran the 100 mile course of the Western States Trail Ride, which was meant for horses. He finished it in 23hrs 42 minutes just meeting the 24 hour cut-off for completing the race.

So, in that instance... humans can be 1 horse power it seems. :)
 
I'v always had a little bit of a hard time with this "horse power" measurement myself.
If humans can briefly produce about 1.2 horse power, 1 horse power cannot be based off of a horse that is really pushing itself very hard, can it? Cars have from 70 to 300 horsepower most often right? Imagine the size of a group of 70 to 300 horses. It's hard to believe a single car would really be able to move anywhere close to the same amount weight than the car's horse power equivalent sized group of horses.
 
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