On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 02:08:12 GMT, "Robert Haston"
may have said:I have always thought that aside from propelling oneself around, the other
best use of human power is growing food; but stooping over and grubbing with
ones hands isn't very efficient. Having played with a small single blade
wheel plow as a kid, including taking turns pulling it with my sister, the
idea seems a reasonable way to get a good workout after work and on weekends
through much of the season.
Has anyone seen such a thing?
Attempts have been made in third-world nations, and there is a reason
why the people there either use fuel-powered machinery or draft
animals if they don't just do the work by hand. There's no advantage
in trying to run the motion of human limbs through a bunch of
conversions to do a task that they are better suited for with just the
direct implement. The extra machinery cannot reduce the amount of
work that has to be performed in order to do a specific task; indeed,
it generally will have the opposite effect, increasing the amount of
work that must be done in order to perform that task through the
addition of the inefficiencies of the machinery itself.
The riding mower shown by another poster is an example of an
exception; the draft effort needed to pull that mower around is not
particularly high, and the usual method of propelling it (by pushing)
is actually not all that efficient. I once demonstrated that such a
push mower could be made much easier to push on level, firm ground by
lengthening the handle, lowering its angle, and increasing the mass of
the mower head. At ten feet of arm, with a 20-pound sack of
fertilizer strapped to the top, it pushed much more easily and cut
more effectively...but it was a pain in the neck to use because it was
near to impossible to maneuver usefully. This doesn't imply that more
power conversions would make a better result, it just shows that the
way to make things more efficient usually involves looking at where
the losses and problems are, and addressing those, rather than trying
to artificially apply a specific arbitrary technology to the task
simply because it exists and is available. Doing that is like driving
screws with a baseball bat; it may work, but there are better ways to
produce hardwood kindling.
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