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Q: Calories per Flight of Stairs ( Answered 5 out of 5 stars,   0 Comments )
Question  
Subject: Calories per Flight of Stairs
Category: Health > Fitness and Nutrition
Asked by: tamkins-ga
List Price: $5.00
Posted: 28 Oct 2003 14:01 PST
Expires: 27 Nov 2003 14:01 PST
Question ID: 270575
I want to know the number of calories burned per pound of body weight
for climbing a flight of stairs.  Assume each story is 14' tall.

Just to be clear, I need to know calories per FLIGHT, not by any unit
of time.
Answer  
Subject: Re: Calories per Flight of Stairs
Answered By: juggler-ga on 28 Oct 2003 15:29 PST
Rated:5 out of 5 stars
 
Hello.

Here are two articles that claim 16 calories are burned by climbing a
flight of stairs.

"...walking up one flight of stairs (burns 16 calories per flight)."
source:
Get Up and Get Going! Sneaking Exercise into Your Busy Day
by Liz Neporent, M.A, hosted by ivillage.com
http://www.ivillage.com/diet/experts/fitfriday/articles/0,,165574_65074,00.html

"Skip the elevator at work and when shopping. Youメll burn H and
youメll get your heart pumping."
source: Healty Ideas, hosted by giantfood.com
http://www.giantfood.com/well_newsletter_display.cfm?ID=22

-----------

However, a more scientific look at this topic from a university
lecture presents a much less optimistic conclusion:

"1 Calorie (nutritional) = 1 kilocalorie (kcal) [i.e., 1000 cal]
1 British Thermal Unit (Btu) = 252 cal
...
If you weigh 120 pounds, how many flights of stairs (12 ft high) would
you have to climb in order to "work off" a 240 Calorie candy bar?
Since you're given the weight/distance information in pounds and feet,
let's start by calculating the work done climbing 1 flight of stairs
in ft-lb.
 (120 lb) x (12 ft) = 1440 ft-lb per flight of stairs 
Using the equivalents above, we can convert this to Calories...

1440 ft-lb x 1 Btu 252 cal  = 466.4 cal = 0.4664 Calories
             -------------
             778 ft-lb 1 Btu
"
source: Natural Sciences I lecture 11: More on Heat and Temperature;
Thermodynamics E. B. Watson," from rpi.edu,cached by Google:
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:o0iWZ0rj5H0J:ees2.geo.rpi.edu/NS1/Notes/11_heat.pdf++calories+%22per+flight+of+stairs%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8



Using this method...
You mentioned 14 feet as the height of the flight of stairs.  Let's
use 150 pounds as an average weight.

150 lbs * 14 feet = 2100 ft-lb

2100 ft-lb * 1 Btu 252 cal  = 680.2 cal = 0.6802 kcal (nutrit. Cal)
           -------------
           778 ft-lb 1 Btu

Thus, this method would suggest that just 2/3rds of a calorie would be
burned by climbing a 14' flight of stairs.

-------
search strategy:
"calories per flight"
calories "per flight of stairs" 

I hope this helps.
tamkins-ga rated this answer:5 out of 5 stars
Thanks, juggler.  16 sounds about right.  I think the
science-experiment answer is wrong because our bodies are not
perfectly efficient machines.  (I've seen that one before in my own
searches.)

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