craig: you're looking at it from a linear perspective. since it's a rotating system, you should use .5Iw^2 to find the kinetic energy, where I is the moment of inertia and w is the angular velocity. without knowing the mass of the little disc thingy or the moment arm's radius, we can't really determine how much power an individual can generate from a normal pull.
adding gearing could increase the radius and mass thus adding a lot more kinetic energy for each pull if you maintain the same velocity.
i think most kids could manage a bit more than 5 pounds of force. if you added gearing and maybe springs to add resistance (potential to kinetic) then a kid could exert around 60N of force along half a meter at a meter or two per second, and you could generate a pretty considerable amount of power with just a few pulls.
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craig: you're looking at it from a linear perspective. since it's a rotating system, you should use .5Iw^2 to find the kinetic energy, where I is the moment of inertia and w is the angular velocity. without knowing the mass of the little disc thingy or the moment arm's radius, we can't really determine how much power an individual can generate from a normal pull.
adding gearing could increase the radius and mass thus adding a lot more kinetic energy for each pull if you maintain the same velocity.
i think most kids could manage a bit more than 5 pounds of force. if you added gearing and maybe springs to add resistance (potential to kinetic) then a kid could exert around 60N of force along half a meter at a meter or two per second, and you could generate a pretty considerable amount of power with just a few pulls.