For the last 3 years my 14 year old son and his grandfather team up for the summer vacation and work on a special project.
The projects are submitted to school after summer and the good ones go in some kind of championship.

Last year they made a water powered electric generator which won the Gold Medal for Chiba Prefecture.
This year they wanted to do the same one but they wanted to increase the power generated.
They made a bigger engine and tested it much the same as they did last year. They weren’t happy with the results though.
The only way they could get a better result was to switch to human powered ‘cycling’ energy.

Here is this year’s machine in action.

1000 watts to light them all up. I tried myself but found the gear ratio was too low. You need to do about 248rpm to get to 1000 watts. My eldest son who used to ride with me would be a super cyclist but he gave it up to pursue athletics. He gave it up just as he was getting faster than me too. I hope he comes back to it one day. He’s probably waiting for me to retire…

Here is last year’s machine:

They do all this while I ride my bike!