In the 19th century in Germany, like the steam horse (HP) used in Anglo-Saxon countries for comparing the power of steam engines with a horse. A 3 hp steam engine can give approximately the same power as one working horse. The 3/1 converter comes from the fact that the 3 hp engine could be replaced by 3 horses working all day in 8 hour changes, and this description of the engine power was to facilitate calculations for investors wanting to replace horses by a steam engine. Thus, the power of 3 HP is the gross power given back by 1 horse, bypassing losses.

Colloquially, mechanical horses are understood as British steam horses (HP) (unit translates as horsepower in English)

1 horse corresponds to the horse's work necessary to raise the weight of 75 kg to a height of one meter in one second.

Based on the written definition, we will determine the human power.

In the experiment, we will use a staircase. The relative height that the students overcome was determined by means of the lowered measuring tape. According to our measurements, it is h = 5.72 m.

To know the mass of individual students and the change in height, we can calculate the change in potential energy from the formula

Ep = m*g*h  (J)

Data

lp	Name	mass m(kg)	height  h(m)	Potential energy of gravity Ep(J)
1	Alicja	64	5,72	3591,24
2	David	61	5,72	3422,91
3	Nuria	64,2	5,72	3602,47
4	Ferran	61,2	5,72	3434,13

 

We measured the time in which the energy change occurred and we calculated the power of individual people using the definition of power

P = W/t 

Table with calculation results

lp	Name	time t(s)	power P(W)	power  P(KM)
1	Alicja	11,68	307,47	0,418
2	David	8,40	407,49	0,554
3	Nuria	11,06	325,72	0,443
4	Ferran	9,56	359,22	0,488

Movie from measurements

and the fastest runer :)