First of all, we needed to know how many watts single person can generate on a bicycle. A quick Google search led us to believe that the average adult can generate between 75 and 400 watts. For the sake of simplicity, we used an average value of around 200 watts per person.

Next up: Watts per server. Luckily, we could just use the value from our own servers: approximately 400 watts. This means you’d need 2 bicycles for every server.

We guesstimated that Facebook has approximately 40,000 servers (someone feel free to give me the real number). At 2 bikes per server, you’d have to station 80,000 bicycles in your server facility. That’s a lot of bikes!

But then there are the people. Assuming 8-hours of activity per shift (broken up so that each person could have rests, Facebook aren’t slave drivers, after all), and the constant need for energy, you’d need 240,000 people to power Facebook 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This number goes up even more if you allow for more breaks/shorter shifts/weekends off/vacation time/etc.

Next time you think your job sucks, think about how you could be doing this instead:

Original photo by xtracycle

So yeah, new day, new design.  I’m never quite satisfied, I suppose.  Don’t get used to this either.  It’ll be gone in a few months most likely