In Back to the Future, 1.21 gigawatts is necessary to travel through time, how big is a gigawatt?

Question

1 billion watts. Can anyone tell me how to understand how big this is? 10 million light bulbs I guess.

Answer 1

Yes, that'd be equivalent to 12,100,000 100 watt lightbulbs running at once.

To see what's needed to generate that kind of power in modern times, take a look at this link. Scroll down to Yantan dam starting at the 3rd picture:

http://www.gxed.com/en/achieve-sd.asp

Answer 2

This is a little on the "techno-babble" side of things. Sure, a gigawatt is a large number of watts, but you really have to consider the mechanism that this was delivered in the movie.... an short term pulse of power of 1.21 gigawatts.

If you look at a typical home electric bill, you will quickly see that power consumption is measured in "kwh" - that is kilowatt hours, meaning what the total consumption of power over time was.

Just using a power measurement without a time measurement, is not really a good comparison.

Going back to some real basics here... Power (wattage) is calculated by multiplying Voltage by Current (i.e amperage).

In the movie, the lack of a nuclear power source (was it plutonium in the movie?) was dealt with by using a lightning bolt as a power source.

According to wikipedia (trust it if you want to), an average bolt of lightning will produce 500megajoules of power... this is 0.5 gigawattsecond. If you say that the power was consumed in less than 1/2 of a second, I guess you could draw the necessary "gigawatts" from it...

Then again... this is just technobabble!

Answer 3

Some nuclear power plants can produce power up to 1.2 GWe (gigawatts electrical).

That's equivalent (to borrow from your example) to the power needed to light 1 million 100W light bulbs for 10 seconds.

It turns out that a lightning bolt can produce that amount of power. So, as a rough calculation, a lightning bolt could supply the energy needs for a city of 500,000 people for about 20-30 seconds.

Answer 4

Ten to the ninth or 1 billion Joules per second. It is a measure of power i.e. energy per unit time. I like your light bulb example, I don't think you can do better.

It is spelled gigawatt as above and unlike the movie it should be pronounced with a hard "g" like the word go.

Answer 5

Do you know what a "Jacob's Ladder" circuit is? It is a circuit designed to multiply voltages. Depending on how robust the device is made will determine how much current it can handle. Therefore, with these two things in mind, to build a power supply capable of producing 1.21 giga-watts you will need to determine the total wattage capability. Now, assume you want to follow general engineering principals: Typically a factor of 1.3 to 1.5 over-design is common. I prefer to design to 1.5 X. So, if your need is 1.21 GW, your supply should be capable of 1.8 GW. That way you will not run into any unforeseen limiting factors. Now, the construction: To simplify construction, I'll assume you know how to build a "Jacob's Ladder" (JL for short). By adding a few active components, something like a J-K Flip/Flop chip should be able to help you build sufficient power levels. By momentarily powering the JL through the "J" circuit, allow the JL to run momentarily. (frequency will depend on discrete components) At any given frequency, clock the J-K so the output becomes the input and power it from the JL output. The added power will feed back into the JL causing an increase in power. Depending on what frequency and other minor factors, your JL power supply SHOULD be able to develop, in theory, well over 5 GW of power. One word of caution, when working with those kinds of voltages, be sure your flux capacitor has been properly cleaned of ALL possible contaminants, as these unforeseen dust particles can become conductive. At that level of power, a short could result in a plasma of hundreds of thousands of degrees. Quite literally, you are building a bomb. Assuming you've keept things clean down to class C-1 you should be good. One hint that a lot of people might overlook is to flush the flux capacitor with Argon gas. The inert gas will aid in preventing any sudden, spontaneous self destruction. Once you have your circuit powered and your capacitor charged, go back in time to when you were a little boy and convince yourself to pay more attention in school. I don't want to have to repeat this explanation again. Good luck. :)

Answer 6

109 watts is a gigawatt

Answer 7

It's certainly more than enough to fry the fuzz off your butt. This is about the average output of a typical nuclear power plant.

Answer 8

figure a bolt of lightning

Answer 9

hello, i beleive it's spelled, "jigawatt"