Just as power plants are needed to conduct the energy to give off electricity to homes, the human body need to store energy. The way humans are able to store energy, is by eating foods and hydrating. Our bodies digest the food we eat by mixing it with fluids (acids and enzymes) in the stomach. When the stomach digests food, the carbohydrate (sugars and starches) in the food breaks down into another type of sugar, called glucose (McCulloch). Our bodies are only able to give off as much energy as we can store, and everyone bodies are different.
When talking about powering the globe, we have several different sources that we use. Theres nuclear, gas, oil, and coal energy which are our primary sources of energy which all contribute to what is known as the greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses contribute to the idea of global warming. That is why we are looking for more “green” ways to power our globe. For example in the United States we have built tall wind turbines to generate energy. Essentially how they work are there is energy in the wind that turns two or three propeller-like blades around a rotor. The rotor is connected to the main shaft, which spins a generator to create electricity. The only problem with the system is that it is inconsistent due to the fact that it is’t windy every day.
The wind turbine is similar to the experiment we did in class. For a lab we ran tests with a generator that is similar to the shake weight. The device was a clear tube that contained a magnet inside, when the device was shaken up and down the magnet would travel up and down through the tube. This device was connected to our Lego robot that was then connected to our mac computers that we have access to in class. When shaken the lego robot with the computer program would measure the amount of energy that we were producing during our trial runs. Unfortunately my group tried several lego robots but for some reason we were unable to get a connection causing us not to be able to complete the experiment. If the experiment did work however, you would have been able to see the different amounts of power that each individual is able to put out due to the differences in energy consumption and body build of my group members. It is truly unfortunate that we were unable to get a successful device to complete the experiment.
McCulloch, David. “How Our Bodies Turn Food Into Energy.” How Our Bodies Turn Food Into Energy. Group Health, 1 Mar. 2014. Web. 19 Feb. 2016.