Mailing List Archive

Re: [LoGH] The gearheads attack =)

Josh Yuan (jjyuan@yahoo.com)
Fri, 13 Oct 2000 16:15:21 -0700 (PDT)


Darn... maybe I was thinking MW hour.  Assuming 1
shot/hour at 1 sec duration.  That should give u the
gigajoules =).  Shot once and recharge for a hour.  If
not, look like science didn't advance that much in a
1000 years...in the LoGH universe.  Or that beam isn't
good for heating frozen dinners.


--- Walter Amos  wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Oct 2000, Josh Yuan wrote:
> 
> > 120 MW = a few hundred gigajoules of energy.(300~
> ?,
> > physics major with the W->J conversion?) So even
> if
> > the beam lost 95% of its energy at max range, that
> is
> > still a few gigajoules of energy. I am assuming a
> 1
> > sec firing period.
> 
> Remember: POWER = ENERGY / unit time!  Thus your
> above conversion W->J
> isn't quite correct, since Watts are a unit of
> Power, and Joules are a
> unit of energy.  In fact, by definition, 1 Watt = 1
> Joule/second!  
> 
> (...oh, I overlooked that you said a 1-second firing
> period...
> anyway... your joules estimate is incorrect)
> 
> 120MW = 120 MegaWatts = 1.2x10^8 Watts = 120 million
> Joule/second,
> = 0.12 gigaJoule/sec
> 
> Your handy-dandy Energy and Power units conversion
> chart:
> 
> 1 Joule = 10^7 erg = 0.239 calorie = 0.738 ft.lbs =
> 2.78x10^-7 kW.hours
> 
> 1 electron-Volt (eV) = 1.6x10^-19 Joule = 1.6x10^-12
> erg
> 
> 1 horsepower = 746 Watts = 550 ft.lb/sec
> 
> And, for those wanting to calculate nuclear yields,
> here is the energy
> equivalence of mass according to E=mc^2:
> 
> 1 kg = 8.897x10^16 Joule
> 
> ...so if I could find the amount of energy released
> per ton of TNT
> explosion, I could work out the number of Megatons
> per unit mass of
> total matter conversion (so you could say an X
> pounds antimatter bomb
> would yield Y Megatons of energy)...
> 
>
==============================================================================
> "Zu jeder Zeit, an jeder (sic) Ort, bleibt das Tun  
>  |       Walter Amos
>   der Menschen das gleiche..." - Galactic Heroes II 
>  |    amos(at)sedl.org
> 


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