Power gauge

Rodeo riders experience a bucking bull's power firsthand. A new device gives fans a way to gauge it as well.

Before a bull enters the ring, the puck-size "XPower" device is glued to its back. As the bull bucks and spins, XPower measures the forces created by the bull's bouncing back. A 907-kilogram (2,000-pound) bull can exert a force of roughly 3 g's or three times the force exerted by Earth's gravity, on the rider. That's similar to the forces you feel while riding a roller coaster. "Think about holding on to that roller coaster with just one hand," says Stephen Wharton, the electrical engineer who invented XPower. "That's why a lot of guys fall off."

During the ride, the device's sensors relay the measurements to a computer. For rodeo fans at home, a graph showing the changing forces is displayed on television. That way viewers can compare the force of one bull to another.

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