Horsepower

I'm sure many people had heard of horsepower(hp), esp in cars... well u can see in anything that has a motor. I'm sure all engineering students know abt this, but have u ever wondered why there's such a term? why can't it be bullpower or smth? i bet most engin students dunno abt this too.

Allow me to enlighten u....

Horsepower(hp) is a term coined by Watts, the very person we honour through our monthly mention in our PUB bills. Yup, for those who had no idea wad i'm toking abt, take a gd look at ur PUB bill. U'll prob see words like kWh which means kilo watt per hour, that very watt we're toking here is a scientific unit we used to honour this guy here. Well Horsepower and Watt actually means the same thing, it refers to the amount of power, but there's a mulitplication factor here. 1hp = 746W and how the hell we came out with this factor? This is due to our smart smart Mr Watts. In the past ppl often use ponies to pull coal up from a quarry and by using basic physics, Watts calculated the average amount of energy exerted by the pony every minute and from there calculate the average amount of power by the pony, coming out with a figure of about 22,000ft-lbs/min and he mulitply this figure by 50%(typical engineer with his safety factor of 1.5) and u get 33,000ft-lbs/min = 746W which he called 1hp. Notice tat i said ponies here, but this is true man, maybe mr Watts couldn't differentiate horses from ponies?

Be enlightened!