Kid's Energy

There was a get-together at work with family invited the other day. 2 kids worked out a game- one would chase the other around the restaurant, around and around and around in circles, shrieking the whole time (we reserved the whole place). It wasn't even like there was ducking and weaving or anything, just on a single, uninterrupted, repeating path.

An hour later, they were still at it. Non-stop.

The department's youngest Dad told me he had read a study where a professional marathon runner was put in a room with a 3 year old, and ate proportionately what the child ate, so they got the same amount of energy for their body mass. Then, they told the athlete to do whatever the child did.

After a few hours, he just couldn't keep up. The kid exhausted him. It's not that anything they do requires a lot of strength, but its this uninterrupted charge of movement and random activity.

Where do they get the energy from? The kid had eaten almost nothing, even given his size. It literally seems to defy the laws of physics. They actually seem to expend more energy than they take in. Forget windpower...to solve the energy crisis, we just have to study little kids, and find out how they can run around for hours on end like that on a half an order of small fries and a mott's fruit cup. Or better yet, we could just strap them up to a turbine so that they generate electricity as they chase each other.