Convert horsepower to duck power

So the answer is useless. :pIn summary, the conversation discusses converting horsepower into duck power, with one participant attempting to find a solution using data and statistics from various sources such as DnD and books. The average weight and horsepower of a horse and duck are provided, as well as the average weight of a human. A calculation using Kleiber's Law is suggested, resulting in an estimate of 42 duck power per horsepower. However, other participants provide different estimates ranging from 25 to 60 duck power per horsepower.
  • #1
DingusDev42
Okay, so maybe this is the wrong forum. I'm here as a last resort, I've been on 4Chan and ask websites for three hours just looking for ideas, or God willing, some real data.

I've been tasked by a friend to convert horse power into duck power. It sounded easy at first but I'm stuck. I've barely gathered any data and I can't think of how to move on.

1 Horsepower = ~750 Watts or 550 foot-pounds per second

The only lead have is that a duck in DnD has a strength attribute of 3, but I don't play DnD so I don't know if that means anything in real world terms.

It's okay if some logical reaches are made, considering the silly nature of this project. If you have an idea concerning where I should look, like a different forum or website, I'm all ears.
 
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  • #2
DingusDev42 said:
Okay, so maybe this is the wrong forum. I'm here as a last resort, I've been on 4Chan and ask websites for three hours just looking for ideas, or God willing, some real data.

I've been tasked by a friend to convert horse power into duck power. It sounded easy at first but I'm stuck. I've barely gathered any data and I can't think of how to move on.

1 Horsepower = ~750 Watts or 550 foot-pounds per second

The only lead have is that a duck in DnD has a strength attribute of 3, but I don't play DnD so I don't know if that means anything in real world terms.

It's okay if some logical reaches are made, considering the silly nature of this project. If you have an idea concerning where I should look, like a different forum or website, I'm all ears.
Minimum cost of transport for a swimming duck is 5.77 kcal/kg per km. (https://books.google.com/books?id=U64JafOXDWkC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=metabolic+rate+of+ducks&source=bl&ots=BxgPCY3HSm&sig=d7ZqsNDQOO1jYkx4WW-Jz5AXq7Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjizJfLy5PQAhUFQyYKHXe6Cd44ChDoAQgaMAA#v=onepage&q=metabolic rate of ducks&f=false) if the average weight of a duck is 2 kg, that's about 2.8 kcal per kilometer. if a duck can swim at .7 m/s, converting that to km/s gives .0007km/s. Now mulitply this to the cost of transport and you get 5.77*.0007/2 ##\approx## .00202 kcal/s.
I shall leave the dimensional analysis for finding the conversion factor up to you.
 
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  • #3
Power would be the ability to do work continuously - if you want DnD appropriate stuff, then compare the stats, probably for dragging or carrying a load.
A light load for a light horse is up to 150 pounds; a medium load, 151–300 pounds; and a heavy load, 301–450 pounds. A light horse can drag 2,250 pounds.
http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Light_Horse
... no stats for a duck (avian) and animals do not have the strength, etc type stats that PC's do.
You'd have to look for closest likely creature: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?275156-Stats-for-birds

Phyiscally, you will want to figure out how "horsepower" is defined in terms of work done by horses, and then find data for what ducks can do.
Consider: Are the ducks walking, swimming, or flying?

Ultimately the conversion will depend on what you want to do with it - why is it relevant?

@Jamison Lahman : wow - just... wow.
8.45W or very roughly 1% of 1hp for swimming.
 
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  • #4
I don't know any references researching duck power, but Monty Python provides some clues about swallows. Apparently, two European swallows should be able to carry a coconut together, using a string held under the dorsal guiding feathers.

No research cited, as these observations were made in medieval times. But if you assume a diameter and drag coefficient for the coconut, and a cruising speed, you can at least estimate the aerodynamic power. I'd have to think about the power required to carry the weight.
 
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  • #5
Solving the point slope equation for humans and horses, where:
The average human weighs 137 lbs, and can sustain 0.1 hp, and the average horse weighs 1100 lbs, and obviously can sustain 1.0 hp​

It is quite clear what the average duck, weighing 7.5 lbs, is capable of.

The answer is a tad less than Jamison Lahman's solution, as his duck was swimming, and mine, was not.

[references available upon request]
 
  • #6
Consider references requested ... all the time, every time.
In a scientific forum, citations are always requested, by default, for any claim.
 
  • #7
Simon Bridge said:
Consider references requested ... all the time, every time.
In a scientific forum, citations are always requested, by default, for any claim.
References:

Weight of an average horse: 1100 lb
https://www.reference.com/pets-animals/much-average-horse-weigh-289a0e909645d02d

weight of an average duck: 7.5 lb = 3.40 kg
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100617221317AAVc6Qn

weight of an average human: 62 kg = 136.69 lb
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/1471-2458-12-439

average hp of 1 human = 0.1 hp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower

Also: Kleiber's Law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber's_law
Kleiber's law, named after Max Kleiber's biological work in the early 1930s, is the observation that, for the vast majority of animals, an animal's metabolic rate scales to the ¾ power of the animal's mass. Symbolically: if q0 is the animal's metabolic rate, and M the animal's mass, then Kleiber's law states that q0 ~ M¾. Thus a cat, having a mass 100 times that of a mouse, will have a metabolism roughly 32 times greater than that of a mouse.

weight ratio horse to duck = 146 2/3
(146 2/3)^(3/4)=42.1
1/42.1 = 0.0238 hp [duck]

This is roughly 3 times my calculation.
 
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  • #8
OmCheeto said:
weight ratio horse to duck = 146 2/3
(146 2/3)^(3/4)=42.1
1/42.1 = 0.0238 hp [duck]
Resulting in the answer of :eek: 42, to within 1 part in 3000.
 
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  • #9
@OmCheeto if nothing else you get high marks for persistence! :woot:
 
  • #10
@DaveC426913 Yup. Douglas Adams is prize winning physicist. Or is that psychic? 42 is the answer to everything as I see you realize fully.
 
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  • #11
Wow, you guys are great. You may be interested to know that I reached out to /tg/ on 4Chan. I figured they'd have some input since I tried using DnD stats. They all came up with some really interesting math and the answers ranged between 25 and 60 duck power per horsepower, with some outliers.

jim mcnamara said:
@DaveC426913 Yup. Douglas Adams is prize winning physicist. Or is that psychic? 42 is the answer to everything as I see you realize fully.

42 isn't the answer to everything like everyone thinks, it's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. But no one knows what the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is. Which is good too, because no one world can know both the question and the answer, because knowing both causes the universe to cease to exist.
 
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  • #12
jim mcnamara said:
@OmCheeto if nothing else you get high marks for persistence! :woot:
I initially considered modeling a spherical duck versus a spherical horse, but things got a bit complicated, so I just googled stuff, and did a few calculations.
I was also curious how to verify the output of ducks, so I imagined 42 ducks in a tug of war contest with a horse. Googling was not my friend.
But I did find a horse which won a tug of war contest against 50 men[ref], so this leads me to believe that a tug of war contest may not be the best test of power output, as 10 men should have been the horses equal.

DingusDev42 said:
the answers ranged between 25 and 60 duck power per horsepower
Excellent! I was just tabulating the results so far. I'll add those two numbers, and one more for good luck:

Code:
hp/dp  dp/hp
0.0070  143  Interpolation by horse, human, duck, point slope method
0.0073  137  Fine structure constant[why not]
0.0133   75  Jamison Lahman's reference. [see note 1]
0.0167   60  4Chan upper range
0.0238   42  Kleiber's Law
0.0400   25  4Chan lower range

note 1: Interestingly, his reference listed Kleiber's name and is dated 1961. The wiki entry dates his work to the 30's. Which meant he was doing duck power experiments for at least 30 years. Now that's persistence.

Max Kleiber [wikipedia]
 
  • #13
Randy Beikmann said:
I don't know any references researching duck power, but Monty Python provides some clues about swallows. Apparently, two European swallows should be able to carry a coconut together, using a string held under the dorsal guiding feathers.

No research cited, as these observations were made in medieval times. But if you assume a diameter and drag coefficient for the coconut, and a cruising speed, you can at least estimate the aerodynamic power. I'd have to think about the power required to carry the weight.
What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
 
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  • #14
DingusDev42 said:
...
42 isn't the answer to everything like everyone thinks, it's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. But no one knows what the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is. Which is good too, because no one world can know both the question and the answer, because knowing both causes the universe to cease to exist.
... the theory is that it will be instantly be replaced by something even more inexplicable. There is another theory that says this has already happened. Perhaps I'll have another glass of whiskey ... yes, that seems more likely.

FactChecker said:
What do you mean? An African or European swallow?
Doesn't seem to matter:
http://style.org/unladenswallow/

 
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  • #15
All said and done, then, a duck should be able to crank out 17 watts if you could get it to turn a wheel somehow, maybe a duck adapted bicycle pedal affair hooked to an alternator or generator. Train it with tidbits till it gets the hang of it and do a dynamo check on the beast:)
 
  • #16
DaveC426913 said:
OmCheeto said:
weight ratio horse to duck = 146 2/3
(146 2/3)^(3/4)=42.1
1/42.1 = 0.0238 hp [duck]
Resulting in the answer of :eek: 42, to within 1 part in 3000.
Oh. I didn't see that you inverted 42.1 to get the decimal.

My answer actually took your .0238 and inverted it, but I got 42.015.
 
  • #17
DaveC426913 said:
Oh. I didn't see that you inverted 42.1 to get the decimal.

My answer actually took your .0238 and inverted it, but I got 42.015.
Given that I know of no fractional ducks, I believe that your inference that 42 is close enough to the answer, makes me trust that Mr. Adams was correct.
 
  • #19
When comparing ducks to horses, 42 is always the common denominator.
 
  • #20
This all seems pretty much a waste of time, particularly when we observe that 1 hp has little or no bearing on the power output from any particular horse at any particular instant.
 
  • #21
Dr.D said:
This all seems pretty much a waste of time, particularly when we observe that 1 hp has little or no bearing on the power output from any particular horse at any particular instant.

Its not a waste of time for those entertained by it. Waste, is a relative term. While i see no use for my old aluminum cans and foil, i would throw them in the trash, to someone who uses aluminum for something such as making aluminum cast models, they would find my actions wasteful. Do refer to the old adage, one man's trash, is another's treasure.
 
  • #22
DingusDev42 said:
...no one knows what the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is...
Yes they do. Marvin read it off, in the last book.

What do you get when you multiply six by nine.
 
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  • #23
I think the answer's Belgium.
 
  • #24
Alright this thread is hilarious :biggrin:

Since Ducks probably expend the most energy during flight, I would approach the "Duck Power" problem by estimating how much energy they expend during flight. We will for the moment, assume 1 hp = 745 W.
  1. It is stated by Ducks.org that an average size hen mallard duck will burn approximately 1.8 million calories during a 1,500 mile flight from Saskatchewan to Louisiana
  2. It is also stated by Ducks.org that most waterfowl species average about 50 mph during flight
  3. Based on this speed, a 1,500 mile flight takes a duck about 30 hours flight time
  4. 1.8 million calories expended in 30 hours calculates to 1 Duck Power = 69.8 W (0.094 hp)

upload_2017-8-25_9-50-31.png
 
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  • #25
Mech_Engineer said:
Since Ducks probably expend the most energy during flight, I would approach the "Duck Power" problem by estimating how much energy they expend during flight.
This seems like a hasty assumption. I would imagine ducks have optimized their flight capabilities as well as the fact they are likely going to try to expend the fewest calories during a 1,500mi flight. An analogy would be how humans expend more calories in water than on land. I am not a physiologist, but something to think about nonetheless.
 
  • #26
Jamison Lahman said:
This seems like a hasty assumption. I would imagine ducks have optimized their flight capabilities as well as the fact they are likely going to try to expend the fewest calories during a 1,500mi flight. An analogy would be how humans expend more calories in water than on land. I am not a physiologist, but something to think about nonetheless.
See for yourself:

http://www.ducks.org/conservation/waterfowl-research-science/understanding-waterfowl-fat-is-fit
Fat stores accumulated prior to and during migration come in handy because flight is among the most energetically costly activities that waterfowl undertake. Ducks burn 12 times more energy in flight than at rest. The energetic costs of flying are proportional to the size of the bird—the bigger the bird, the more energy required.
 
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  • #28
Jamison Lahman said:
I find it troubling that duckpower is equal to humanpower. I am not sure what to make of this revelation.

Indeed, although per Wikipedia trained human athletes can sustain ~3.7 duck-power for a period of several hours ;-)

Wikipedia.org said:
When considering human-powered equipment, a healthy human can produce about 1.2 hp briefly (see orders of magnitude) and sustain about 0.1 hp (74.57 W) indefinitely; trained athletes can manage up to about 2.5 hp (1.85 kW) briefly and 0.35 hp (260 W) for a period of several hours.
 
  • #29
Mech_Engineer said:
Indeed, although per Wikipedia trained human athletes can sustain ~3.7 duck-power for a period of several hours ;-)
Hmmmm. It does not seem like horsepower is defined as the maximum energy output of a horse, but rather the average output over a few hours of turning a mill wheel. Also, if a human can exceed a humanpower by an order of magnitude briefly, it seems reasonable to speculate so too could a horse and a duck. Therefore, I reason a duckpower should be roughly an order of magnitude less than the maximum output, resulting in an answer closer to mine and @OmCheeto's.

P.S. if anyone has any ducks, I implore you to make a to-scale mill wheel and see how many turns the duck is capable of in an hour.
 
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  • #30
Jamison Lahman said:
P.S. if anyone has any ducks, I implore you to make a to-scale mill wheel and see how many turns the duck is capable of in an hour.
The to-scale mill wheel is the easy part, in fact I might even volunteer; assuming you train the ducks.
 
  • #31
Tom.G said:
The to-scale mill wheel is the easy part, in fact I might even volunteer; assuming you train the ducks.
That's why I made the duck statement the conditional. I don't have any ducks to train :/
 
  • #32
Jamison Lahman said:
I don't have any ducks to train :/
:frown:
 
  • #33
it seems we are missing something here.

Does anyone remember a thread I started a few year back? I wonder if it's possible to determine the energy efficiency of a duck?

energy split.duck.png


searching PF for: duck efficiency
yielded no results
so I searched for: human body efficiency
and came up with roughly 20%
[ref 1: ≈30%][ref 2: 14%][ref 3: 20%]

Mech_Engineer said:
1.8 million calories expended in 30 hours calculates to 1 Duck Power = 69.8 W (0.094 hp)

Assuming ducks are as efficient as humans, I believe 1 Duck Power should be closer to 69.8/5 = 14 W
Though many people claim that physically fit humans are more efficient than people like me, and ducks seem quite fit, IMHO, so it's probably a bit higher than 14 watts. Which indicates to me, that 42 is the answer.

Code:
hp/dp   dp/hp   watts   method/source
0.0070  143      5.2    Interpolation by horse, human, duck, point slope method
0.0073  137      5.4    Fine structure constant [why not]
0.013    75      9.9    Jamison Lahman's reference
0.017    60     12      4Chan upper range
0.019    53     14      Mech Eng * 20%
0.024    42     18      Kleiber's Law/ Douglas Adams
0.040    25     30      4Chan lower range
0.094    11     70      Mech Eng
------  -----   -----   ----------------------
0.018    57     13      median
Note 1: Birds, and therefore I assume ducks, although capable, do not pass gas [ref]
 
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  • #34
CWatters said:

One of my classmates in grad school told me that as an undergraduate student assistant, he had given a similar exercise involving "dipping ducks". The comparison was to a nearby power plant operated by the Duke Power Company (in North Carolina), so the desired conversion factor was "ducks per Duke."
 
  • #35
OmCheeto said:
it seems we are missing something here.

Does anyone remember a thread I started a few year back? I wonder if it's possible to determine the energy efficiency of a duck?

View attachment 209784

searching PF for: duck efficiency
yielded no results
so I searched for: human body efficiency
and came up with roughly 20%
[ref 1: ≈30%][ref 2: 14%][ref 3: 20%]
Assuming ducks are as efficient as humans, I believe 1 Duck Power should be closer to 69.8/5 = 14 W
Though many people claim that physically fit humans are more efficient than people like me, and ducks seem quite fit, IMHO, so it's probably a bit higher than 14 watts. Which indicates to me, that 42 is the answer.

Code:
hp/dp   dp/hp   watts   method/source
0.0070  143      5.2    Interpolation by horse, human, duck, point slope method
0.0073  137      5.4    Fine structure constant [why not]
0.013    75      9.9    Jamison Lahman's reference
0.017    60     12      4Chan upper range
0.019    53     14      Mech Eng * 20%
0.024    42     18      Kleiber's Law/ Douglas Adams
0.040    25     30      4Chan lower range
0.094    11     70      Mech Eng
------  -----   -----   ----------------------
0.018    57     13      median
Note 1: Birds, and therefore I assume ducks, although capable, do not pass gas [ref]
If birds have eliminated the need to pass gas, I see no problem with eliminating the exhaust path in the energy split diagram. Furthermore, I concur that ducks seem reasonably fit and the notion they're more efficient than large, energy hungry humans makes sense to me. I conclude that one duckpower is most likely 29±15 W. Since 42 is within one standard deviation, I see no problem with using that as the accepted value (assuming no experimental evidence countering this).
 
<h2>What is horsepower and duck power?</h2><p>Horsepower is a unit of power used to measure the rate at which work is done. Duck power is a humorous unit of power that is not officially recognized and is often used as a joke.</p><h2>How do you convert horsepower to duck power?</h2><p>There is no official conversion between horsepower and duck power, as duck power is not a recognized unit of measurement. However, some people use the conversion of 1 horsepower = 2 duck power as a joke.</p><h2>Why is duck power not a recognized unit of measurement?</h2><p>Duck power is not a recognized unit of measurement because it is not a scientifically accurate or standardized unit. It is often used as a humorous concept and is not meant to be taken seriously.</p><h2>Can duck power be used to measure the power of real ducks?</h2><p>No, duck power is not a scientifically accurate unit and cannot be used to measure the power of real ducks. It is simply a humorous concept and should not be used for any serious measurements.</p><h2>Is there any practical use for duck power?</h2><p>No, duck power is not a practical unit of measurement and is not used in any scientific or engineering fields. It is simply a joke and has no practical use.</p>

What is horsepower and duck power?

Horsepower is a unit of power used to measure the rate at which work is done. Duck power is a humorous unit of power that is not officially recognized and is often used as a joke.

How do you convert horsepower to duck power?

There is no official conversion between horsepower and duck power, as duck power is not a recognized unit of measurement. However, some people use the conversion of 1 horsepower = 2 duck power as a joke.

Why is duck power not a recognized unit of measurement?

Duck power is not a recognized unit of measurement because it is not a scientifically accurate or standardized unit. It is often used as a humorous concept and is not meant to be taken seriously.

Can duck power be used to measure the power of real ducks?

No, duck power is not a scientifically accurate unit and cannot be used to measure the power of real ducks. It is simply a humorous concept and should not be used for any serious measurements.

Is there any practical use for duck power?

No, duck power is not a practical unit of measurement and is not used in any scientific or engineering fields. It is simply a joke and has no practical use.

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