At what point does it become more efficient to climb over a fence rather than walk around?
Feel free to assume any normal variations of fencing to help illustrate the case (e.g., 3 ft. chain link, 6 ft. wood, 6 ft. brick, etc.).
Walking: A simple rule of thumb is 100 calories per mile for a 160 pound person.
The link talks about food consumption, so the units are actually Calories (kcal).
So it takes 100/5280 = 0.0189 kcal for a 160 pound person to walk one foot.
Climbing: Lifting 160 pounds 1 foot, requires 160 footpounds of work. That’s equal to 0.0518 kcal
That figure is a low estimate, as it’s straight work and doesn’t include a factor for the inefficiency of the human machine, or any of the contortions that may be needed to actually scale a wall.
Ignoring those errors, 0.0518/0.0189 = 2.74; so climbing a 1 foot wall takes the same energy as walking 2.74 feet. Climbing a 10 foot wall would take the same energy as walking 27.4 feet etc. etc.
There’s some level of calories required to climb down under a controlled manner too…
Pfft. Real men fall.
Wow, so taking some inefficiencies into account, a “standard” fence or wall (7 ft.?) climb is about the same as a 30 ft. walk.
So, if I’m at one end of my front yard, a fairly standard single family residential lot, and I want to get to my back yard, I really should hop the fence rather than going around to the gate.
… but I don’t weigh under 200 pounds.
Sure, if the fence is built like a sturdy ladder with conveniently-spaced steps. Once the chain links and barbed wire become involved, though…
And has a slide on the other side. Actually, that’s probably the easiest way to transit the fence, build a 7 foot high slide over it.
You also should add in the distance you have to walk to make it up 7 feet, that’s probably about 10 feet. That would make it equal to a 40 foot walk. So, instead of walking around 20 feet of fencing, you climb up the ladder and slide down.
That doesn’t seem terribly outrageous, but climbing a fence is far more difficult than walking up stairs. The level of inefficiency is going to be highly dependent on the individual. I might struggle with a 7 foot fence, my mom wouldn’t make it over at all, and a free runner would barely miss a beat.