hahaha im totally going to build one of those i have an air compressor and an old shwin in the basement

[woo first comment]

Posted at 1:16 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by drew

now we just have to figure out a way to hook this up to a hamster wheel with a system of gears and belts and stuff.

Posted at 2:11 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by mike

be nice if there were more details.

I wonder how many calories you’d burn chilling one beer? If you could make it come out even, this would be pretty sweet.

If a beer is approximately 336 grams of water, and one calorie will heat one gram of water by one degree celsius, and we assume that this process is 100 percent efficient backwards, that means you’d actually burn almost three times the caloric content of the beer cooling it (more if it’s light!).

Of course, this doesn’t take into account the fact that you’d have to submerge the can in water, providing a greater thermal mass and making it that much more difficult to cool the beer.

At any rate, we can assume that you burn more energy than you consume.

Unless I’m wrong.

Posted at 2:17 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by dirk

What’s with the misspelling?

Posted at 2:18 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by RT (Panzer Time!)

Yeah, it’s spelled “exercise”. Don’t worry, had to look it up too. Being of the geeky persuasion, the word isn’t exactly part of our everyday vocabulary, understandably enough. :p

Posted at 2:33 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by F.

@dirk
“Food Calories” in the U.S. are actually kilocalories, so one beer that says it has 300 “calories”, actually has 300,000 scientific calories, so you’d have to heat up a LOT of water to break even.
-Taylor

Posted at 2:54 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by Taylor Alexander

Dirk, there is one problem with your numbers. In regards to food labels, I believe one food Calorie is actually is actually 1000 calories.

Posted at 2:55 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by jake

my suggestion as A/C technican would be to change the little compressor into a bigger four-step type, maybe a six-cylinder from york. So you could switch between different grades on your virtual ride.

Posted at 4:26 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by Matthias

“so easy, even a caveman can do it”

Posted at 4:50 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by TRAVIS

Food calories on US labels are actually kilocalories. Also, the body is about 25% efficient. It’s better to compare Watt output and Joules. One Joule of output energy burns about 1 calorie (1/1000 food calories).

If a 12oz glass has 150 calories (typical), you would have to output 150kiloJoules. If you want to burn two beers per hour, that’s 83 Watts output for an hour (very easy for someone who can run a mile in under 10 minutes, takes walks daily, or does some form of regular exercise).

It is left as an exercise to reader to determine if this meets or exceeds the requirements for cooling a beer.

Also note that a bike chain is typically 97% efficient (wow!). I’m not sure how efficient this cooling process is.

Posted at 10:07 pm on Oct 31st, 2008 by Nick

Hahaha

Roland Mösl is everywhere on the Internetz
(the guy on the bike)

Posted at 5:37 am on Nov 1st, 2008 by Christian

Hey, ain’t that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead?

I thought he liked heroin, not beer.

Posted at 8:14 am on Nov 1st, 2008 by Almost_There

Nah, he was fatter.

Posted at 9:55 am on Nov 1st, 2008 by RT (Panzer Time!)

yeah.. until he started using this bike to chill his beer… then he lost a lot of weight!

Posted at 1:54 pm on Nov 1st, 2008 by tbare

go green, cool beer waiting after exercise, but fruit juice would be better.

Posted at 5:44 am on Nov 2nd, 2008 by diymaker

hey almost_there, I agree. who can get over the fact that they guy looks like jerry garcia!?

Posted at 8:24 am on Nov 17th, 2008 by don