From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Oct 16 2002 - 16:37:40 MDT
--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
> Spike writes:
> > Speaking of which, a horsepower is 550 ft pounds
> > per second. Whats up with that? That must have
> > been one flimsy pony, with the flu, to only pull
> > that much. Hell, a strong *human* can make almost
> > that much power in a short burst. spike
>
> Actually, I heard that it takes a kind of super-horse
> to maintain 1 horsepower. And indeed, if you run up
> a flight of stairs you're expending a *lot* of energy
> per second---several horsepower IIRC.
Actually, the 550 ft-lbs/sec was established as a dragging measure, not
using a frictionless surface. The horsepower was established back in
the time of real county fairs, etc where outside of racing the primary
entertainment was load dragging contests (using both oxen and horse
teams), which measured how much weight (pounds) an animal or team of
animals could drag along the ground x many feet in x many seconds.
Needless to say, it wasn't a perfect measure, since different types of
ground would have different coefficients of friction, primarily due to
moisture content. The standard of 'dry ground' was subject to human
judgement by non-scientific means.
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