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What is the more efficient way to climb stairs? Taking two steps at a time is almost twice faster, but how much energy does it take compared to taking one step at a time?

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In an ideal system, there'd be no difference, since your gravitational potential energy changes by the same amount in both cases. There is a difference, but it comes from your legs' efficiencies, and so this is more an anatomy/physiology question. – Chris White Sep 15 '12 at 18:10
See the other questions tagged [biophysics] for some discussion on the difficulties of understanding animal locomotion in term of physics 101 concepts. The short version is that it's too complicated for analysis in that way. – dmckee♦ Sep 15 '12 at 18:17
As Chris said, "your gravitational potential energy changes by the same amount in both cases". But I think (and this is just an intuitive idea) power changes: in fact making one step take longer than making two steps at a time. – R. M. Sep 15 '12 at 22:29

closed as off topic by David Zaslavsky♦ Sep 16 '12 at 8:12

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