Have you experienced one of those afternoons where you are chain answering telephone calls and managing your e-mails for hours at a time? Then you stand up and you are stiff from too much sitting.
Why not change your life with an under-the-desk pedal machine?
That’s the proposition of Dr. Lucas Carr, from Department of Exercise and Sport Science at East Carolina University, which I found in British Medical Journal of Sports Medicine. Tested on volunteers during one month, in 2011, they pedalled an average 23 minutes a day –in short spurts- with the benefits of exercising without being distracted from their work and burning 180 calories. What an interesting idea!
Afterwards, I thought why not transform this pedalling into usable power? Surfing on the web, I found 3 innovative examples of pedal-powered laptop :
- One awarded in Intel Competition on Renewable Energy
- Another developed at MIT
- The third in use in Afghanistan since 2009. A laptop that needs no additional power sources at all and that can be easily transported through rural areas.
Want to buy one? It starts from 22 $. Be sure to read Dr. Carr’s recommendations.