At what rate would a 120-pound person burn calories while bicycling at 12 mi/h?
Use a calorie counter to calculate the calories required, such as:
http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1249686113
Notice that these are average values. Other sites/calculators may give different results, as the activity is not mathematically defined.
To determine the rate at which a 120-pound person burns calories while bicycling at 12 miles per hour (mi/h), we can use the formula:
Calories burned per minute = (MET * 3.5 * weight in kg) / 200
where MET (Metabolic Equivalent Task) is a unit used to estimate the energy expenditure of physical activities.
First, let's convert the weight from pounds to kilograms. Since 1 pound is equal to 0.45359237 kilograms, we can calculate:
Weight in kg = 120 pounds * 0.45359237 = 54.4310844 kg (rounded to the nearest decimal)
Next, we need to determine the MET value for bicycling at 12 mi/h. According to the Compendium of Physical Activities, bicycling at a pace of 12-14.9 mi/h has an average MET value of 8.0.
Now we can plug in the values into the formula:
Calories burned per minute = (8.0 MET * 3.5 * 54.4310844 kg) / 200
Calculating this equation results in:
Calories burned per minute ≈ 8.49
Therefore, a 120-pound person would burn approximately 8.49 calories per minute while bicycling at 12 mi/h.