Back to the Future’s 1.21 gigawatts sounds huge, but is it? We compare different power levels of common objects to see how much energy a gigawatt really is.
- Cap ( @Cap@kbin.social ) 7•6 months ago
It would have the equivalent power of 1.3 million horses kicking a hole in the fabric of reality.
Finally explained in terms I can understand!
- Bizarroland ( @Bizarroland@kbin.social ) 6•6 months ago
Americans will use anything to avoid the metric system
Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
- ivanafterall ( @ivanafterall@kbin.social ) 4•6 months ago
Finally some science to back up the movie!
- Rozaŭtuno ( @Rozauhtuno@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 1•6 months ago
Sorry, I still don’t get it. How much would that be in Olympic swimming pools?
- Cap ( @Cap@kbin.social ) 1•6 months ago
The article does lack any conversion to Olympic swimming pools, bananas, or infinity stones so some of us may never truly grasp the scale of this power.
- DarkGamer ( @DarkGamer@kbin.social ) 6•6 months ago
How many gigawatts in a jiggawatt?
- Don DeBon ( @DonDeBon@writing.exchange ) 0•6 months ago
Actually, Jiggawatt is gigawatt mispronounced. So they are the same thing. :) There is an article in the NY Times regarding this that when they were doing research, someone mispronounced it to them.
- po-lina-ergi ( @po-lina-ergi@kbin.social ) 3•6 months ago
Who am I going to trust? You, or a man who literally invented a time machine?
I finally invent something that works!
- Don DeBon ( @DonDeBon@writing.exchange ) 0•6 months ago
@po-lina-ergi @inkican @DarkGamer
LOL. You forgot to mention NYT. https://archive.nytimes.com/wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/you-say-gigawatt-i-say-jigowatt/Calvin? Why do you keep calling me Calvin?
- originalucifer ( @originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com ) 6•6 months ago
1.21gw == output of 1 nuke plant for 1 day == power single home for 100 years
avg lightning = 10gw
Save the Clock Tower!
- reflex ( @reflex@kbin.social ) 2•6 months ago
1.21gw == output of 1 nuke plant for 1 day == power single home for 100 years
avg lightning = 10gw
Whoa, this is heavy.
There’s that word again. ‘Heavy.’ Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there a problem with the Earth’s gravitational pull?
- jonsnothere ( @jonsnothere@beehaw.org ) 1•6 months ago
No, an average nuclear plant outputs 1 GW. That means 1 GWh per hour or 24 GWh per day. Watt is how far you pull the handle for the tap, Wh is how much water comes out in an hour. So lightning is 10 GW, but for less than a second, which means the kwh is maybe in the hundreds somewhere, not anywhere near what a nuclear plant produces in an hour, let alone a day.
But if you need a very short burst of electricity for something, lightning is indeed the best way to do it.
- Jajcus ( @Jajcus@kbin.social ) 3•6 months ago
A 100-watt bulb is so named because it uses 100 watts of energy for every hour of operation.
This does not make sense. watt is not a unit of energy.
Neither does this:
We’re still nowhere close to a gigawatt, we’ll need 1,000 megawatts to get there. That’s enough electricity to keep the average American home powered up for 100 years.
- Entropywins ( @Entropywins@kbin.social ) 5•6 months ago
For anyone curious energy is the ability to do work and power is how fast that work can be done. Power represented in watts is the relationship of units of energy per unit of time or 1 watt = 1 joule (energy unit or work that can be done) per second.
- Bizarroland ( @Bizarroland@kbin.social ) 4•6 months ago
When I read those things I always assume they’re talking about megawatt hours.
Considering that the average american home consumes a little under 1000 kilowatt hours a month then the math starts to line up.
1000 KW hours is 1 megawatt hour. 1,000 megawatt hours is 1 gigawatt hour, so 1,000 months, while being a bit shy of 100 years, is still 83 years and change.
- absGeekNZ ( @absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz ) English2•6 months ago
This article is completely wrong.
Watts doesn’t have a time factor at all.
Power is measured in W (Watts).
Energy is measured in J (Joule’s), or Wh (Watt-hours) where 1 Wh = 3600 J.So 1.21GW is enough power to light 12.1 million 100 W bulbs, if you kept them powered for 1s you would use 1.21GJ of energy, which is 3.36MWh.
I can’t believe how badly the article gets it wrong.
I’m an engineer, I work with this stuff regularly.
- Lath ( @Lath@kbin.earth ) 1•6 months ago
Cool.