Going to the gym traditionally means burning calories and expending energy — but what if it we could harness that energy and use it to power the machines we’re using and the iPods we’re clutching? At the University of Oregon, students have the opportunity to do just that. On May 11th, the UO rec center was outfitted with 20 elliptical machines accompanied by specifically designed ReCardio devices, which capture human (kinetic) energy and convert it into electricity. The man-made electricity then makes its way to a converter before it’s transferred to a local power grid.
One of the coolest parts of working out on a ReCardio elliptical is that it displays the amount of watts-hours that are generated, and specifies what the resulting electricity may be used to power. To learn more about human powered electricity at the UO rec, look here.
[photo: Flickr]
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