What Is the Duckpower of a Car and How to Calculate It?
We’ve all heard of horsepower. That’s the power in a car engine, right? But what about duckpower? Are we now using ducks to measure the engine power of a car? If yes, are you curious about calculating the duckpower of your car?
A few years ago, some guys from the YouTube channel Art of Engineering showed that it was not too complicated to convert the horsepower into duckpower. To know how many ducks your car equals, you just need to do some simple math and keep an open mind.
Horsepower vs Duckpower: Power Measurement Units
The term horsepower was coined in the early 1800s when it was used to describe the amount of power a steam engine could produce. It is commonly used to measure the power of vehicles and other machines.
Horses are measured in horsepower, which is equivalent to 746 watts. This measurement is so named because it was first used by James Watt, inventor of the steam engine.
The horsepower measures the power and torque that an engine can produce. You can measure it as how many pounds of force an engine can exert every inch of distance traveled per minute. The more power an engine has, the faster and with more torque it can pull or push the car.
The duckpower is a similar concept but it does the calculation by assuming the power of a duck.
How to Calculate the Duckpower
The horsepower is calculated by a horse’s capacity of lifting a certain amount of weight within one second. The power a horse applies to hoist 550 pounds of weight from the depth of one foot in one second is equal to one horsepower. In the SI system, that power equals 746 watts.
The horsepower of a car calculates the number of horses it would take to replace the engine of the car. A similar principle applies when determining the duckpower of any vehicle.
The Art of Engineering people calculated the duckpower by dictating an animal’s consumption rate equal to its mass and then multiplying it to the power of ¾. Then, they completed the Kleiber’s law by diving the duck’s mass by the horse’s mass. By calculating this way, you will get a 131.2 duckpower value for 1 horsepower.
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How Much Duckpower Does Your Car Have?
Since you get the formula (1 HP = 131.2 duckpower), it’s quite simple to convert the HP of your car into duckpower. For example, the HP of a Toyota Prius hybrid is 134. So, its duckpower is 134 x 131.2 = 17,580.8 duckpower.
If you have a regular Bugatti Chiron Sport that cracks a massive 1479 horsepower, its duckpower will be a whopping 1,94,044.8.
In this way, you can calculate the duckpower of any vehicle you want. In addition, it’s also possible to figure out the sharkpower or dolphinpower of a car by applying the same formula. Isn’t that fun?
