A gigawatt is equal to one billion watts, and most of us are familiar with a watt. The light bulbs in our homes are typically between 60 and 100 watts. So 1.21 gigawatts would power more than 10 million light bulbs or one fictional flux capacitor in a time-traveling DeLorean.
Can lightning generate 1.21 gigawatts?
And while lightning strikes vary in strength, Dr. Brown was right: they can produce 1.21 gigawatts of power . That’s a sobering fact when you consider that lightning is Utah’s second deadliest natural hazard and has been for the last 15 years according to Utah.gov.
How much power does 1 GW power generate?
A watt is a measure of power and there are 1 billion watts in 1 GW. (And if you wanted to break it down even further, 1 million watts = 1 megawatt [MW] and 1,000 watts = 1 kilowatt [kW].)
How many gigawatts does it take to power a DeLorean?
Well, Doc said 1.21 gigawatts .
How much gigawatts does the US use?
America Now Has 27.2 Gigawatts of Solar Energy: What Does That Mean? – Inside Climate News.
What’s bigger than a gigawatt?
A kilowatt (kW) is 1,000 watts, a megawatt (MW) is 1,000 kilowatts, a gigawatt (GW) is 1,000 megawatts, and a terawatt (TW) is 1,000 gigawatts.
Can plutonium generate 1.21 gigawatts?
The chemical element plutonium was used in the first version of the DeLorean time machine to fuel an onboard nuclear reactor which could generate the 1.21 gigawatts of momentary power required for temporal displacement of the vehicle while traveling at 88 miles per hour.
How many coulombs are in a lightning bolt?
An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes (30 kA), and transfers 15 C (coulombs) of electric charge and 1 gigajoule of energy. Large bolts of positive lightning can carry up to 120 kA and 350 C.
Is a Jigawatt the same as a gigawatt?
So a jigowatt is actually supposed to be a gigawatt , a million watts.
How much can 30 gigawatts power?
According to the White House, the 30,000-megawatt target will generate enough energy to power 10 million homes while avoiding adding 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
How big is a 1 gigawatt solar farm?
One gigawatt is roughly the size of two coal-fired power plants and is enough energy to power 750,000 homes.
Is it 1.21 gigawatts or Jigawatts?
The film’s writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale intended for the power to be gigawatts , but heard it pronounced as “jigawatt” and as such spelt and said it that way in the script, not learning the real pronounciation until after the film had been shot.
Can a DeLorean go 88 mph?
In the Back to the Future franchise, the DeLorean time machine is a time travel device made by retrofitting a DMC DeLorean vehicle with a flux capacitor. The car requires 1.21 gigawatts of power and needs to travel 88 miles per hour (142 km/h) to initiate time travel .
Why is 88 mph?
(Back to the Future) Provided the Flux Capacitor allowed time travel by generating a wormhole to the programmed temporal destination , but these wormholes are unstable and only last for a little over a tenth of a second.
How many houses can 1 megawatt power?
To put that number in perspective, the Solar Energy Industries Association (a U.S. trade association) calculates that on average 1 megawatt of solar power generates enough electricity to meet the needs of 164 U.S. homes .
What produces the most electricity?
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of the nation’s electricity was generated by natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy in 2019. Electricity is also produced from renewable sources such as hydropower, biomass, wind, geothermal, and solar power.
How much is gigawatt hour?
Gigawatt hours, abbreviated as GWh, is a unit of energy representing one billion (1 000 000 000) watt hours and is equivalent to one million kilowatt hours . Gigawatt hours are often used as a measure of the output of large electricity power stations.
What are kilowatts per hour?
A kilowatt-hour measures the energy an appliance uses in kilowatts per hour . For example, if you clean your floors with a 1,000-watt vacuum cleaner for one hour, you consume 1 kWh of energy. Your kilowatt-hour consumption factors in how many watts your appliances use and how often you use them.
Is a Jigawatt real?
Without fact checking the movie in too much detail, a gigawatt is a real measure of power . A gigawatt is equal to one billion watts, and most of us are familiar with a watt. The light bulbs in our homes are typically between 60 and 100 watts.
What is a Yottawatt?
Yottawatt (noun, “YOT-ah-wat”)
One million billion billion watts . A watt is used to measure the flow of energy that is used, released or converted from one form to another.
How many terawatts does the US use?
According to the United States Energy Information Administration, America has used 4,146.2 Terawatt hours (a Terawatt is a unit of power equal to one trillion watts). The majority of electricity is used by homes, which accounts for about 38 percent of all consumption.
Is uranium or plutonium more powerful?
Plutonium-239, the isotope found in the spent MOX fuel, is much more radioactive than the depleted Uranium-238 in the fuel . Plutonium emits alpha radiation, a highly ionizing form of radiation, rather than beta or gamma radiation.
What powers the car in Back to the Future?
For a little while, this nuclear reactor was what powered the “Back to the Future” DeLorean’s ability to travel through time, using radioactive plutonium as fuel. Later, the car would be further modified, so electricity from a lightning bolt could fuel the time machine instead of having to use the plutonium.
What does liquid plutonium look like?
when liquid (at m.p. ) Plutonium is a radioactive chemical element with the symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states.
How many coulombs does a battery have?
that’s 2.5 x 3600 = 9000 “ampere-second” an ampere is defined as 1 coulomb per second. so the AA battery holds 9000 coulomb of charge.
How many electrons are in a Coulomb?
One coulomb (C) of charge represents an excess or deficit of 6.24 x 1018 electrons. The quantity of charge (Q) on an object is equal to the number of elementary charges on the object (N) multiplied by the elementary charge (e).
What is red lightning?
Sprites, also known as red lightning, are electrical discharges that appear as bursts of red light above clouds during thunderstorms .
