How Long Would it Take to Charge Yourself?

Pretend, just for a second, that you don't require food. Pretend that we use electricity as energy instead of food. Pretend that you need to be CHARGED every day instead of eating.

Assuming you could charge yourself by plugging into a wall outlet, how long would you need to stay plugged in to get the same amount of energy as from eating a full day's worth of food?

So, first let's talk about how much energy we eat / consume in a day. As many people can imagine or have heard, a "2000 Calorie" diet is relatively standard. So let's start with this. A calorie actually stands for KILOcalorie. And 1 calorie is equal to 4.18 joules. Now... you are probably asking yourself.. What is a joule??

Well... there are two types of measurement that you are going to need to know. One is a joule and the other is a watt. A joule is a pretty confusing concept, but all you need to know is that a joule is a unit of electrical energy that scientists measure. A watt is also a unit of electrical energy. A watt represents 1 joule per second. 

                                  Watt= 1 joule per second

For the next step we need to ask ourselves, "How much power will we draw out of the outlet?"

Every machine has a specific amount of power that they use. For example, a microwave uses 1,450 Watts! A dishwasher uses 1,200 Watts! These are very powerful machines that require a lot of energy. Something such as a computer, however, uses only 100-500 Watts. An iPhone uses only 5 Watts to charge.

Sooooooo.... if we used the same amount of power that a microwave does, it would only take  1.9 hours!

But  if we used the same power as a computer (250 Watts) it would take 11 hours of charging!

While being a robot would be pretty cool, its probably better that we eat instead of charge ourselves.