How Much Power Is 1.21 Gigawatts, Anyway? The Science Behind Back to the Future
How Much Power Is 1.21 Gigawatts, Anyway? The Science Behind Back to the Future
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.
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.
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1.21gw == output of 1 nuke plant for 1 day == power single home for 100 years
avg lightning = 10gw
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.
haha, i read the article. its all in there.
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.
1.21 gw = output of one nuke plant
1.21 gw × 1 day = (power requirements of a house) × (100 years)I'm guessing
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?
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