this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
8 points (90.0% liked)

Science Fiction

24 readers
7 users here now

This magazine is aimed at fans and creators of sci-fi and related media of all kinds. It includes all content related to the sci-fi genre and only content related to the sci-fi genre. The goal is to build a community for everyone who enjoys science fiction and related topics. This includes the obvious books, movies, and TV shows, but also original writing, the discussion of writing SF, futuristic art and designs, and the science and technologies that inspire the sci-fi genre. **Team Top 20**

founded 1 year ago
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (7 children)

1.21gw == output of 1 nuke plant for 1 day == power single home for 100 years

avg lightning = 10gw

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Where are you getting those numbers from? First of all, GW is a unit of power, not energy. You can’t “produce 1.21GW in a day” because it’s a measurement of instantaneous power. Some nuclear reactors produce around 1GW(e), which means 1 gigawatt hour per hour.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

haha, i read the article. its all in there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah, and the article is wrong, though only slightly. They seem to be confusing watts (power, energy over time) with Joules (energy, power times a duration of time). They give a passable definition in the beginning ("energy transfer"), but they seem to misunderstand what the "transfer" part means exactly.

If you find-replace all instances of "watt" with "watt-hour" after that starting definition, it would be more accurate. That's why I say it's only slightly wrong.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)