Is a bolt of lightning 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 is 1.21 gigawatts of electricity?

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 plutonium generate 1.21 gigawatts?

History. 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.

Is it 1.21 gigawatts or jigawatts?

Fictional measurement? 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.

How much power is in a bolt of lightning?

A typical lightning flash is about 300 million Volts and about 30,000 Amps. In comparison, household current is 120 Volts and 15 Amps.

1.21 Gigawatts - Back to the Future (6/10) Movie CLIP (1985) HD

Could a lightning bolt power a city?

A single bolt of it carries a few billion joules of energy, sufficient enough to power a tens of homes for a day.

Why can't we harness the power of lightning?

Lightning is both incredibly powerful and crazy fast. Each strike would force about fifty thousand amps of current into a battery in just microseconds. No existing battery could survive this onslaught; batteries need to charge up more slowly.

Is 1.21 gigawatts a real thing?

Given that one of the highest consumers of household power, an electric oven, only uses 12,200 watts – a gigawatt is mighty powerful. And while lightning strikes vary in strength, Dr. Brown was right: they can produce 1.21 gigawatts of power.

Can 1 gigawatt power a city?

A gigawatt is a massive amount of energy equalling 1000 megawatts. That is enough to power a medium-sized city. To generate that much power in a day would take over 3 million solar panels.

How many homes will 1 gigawatt power?

One GW can produce enough electricity to support 750,000 homes or 300 large commercial buildings with the air conditioning running full time. A GW can produce enough carbon dioxide emissions, which are equal to taking more than 200,000 cars for one year or 18 billion pounds of coal being burned.

Why is it 88 mph in Back to the Future?

88 mph (142 km/h) was chosen as the time travel speed because it was easy to remember and looked "cool" on the speedometer. A custom speedometer was built to simulate 88 mph, as a 1979 law passed by then-President Jimmy Carter had limited speedometers to 85 mph to reduce speeding.

How long until we run out of plutonium?

Pu-242, (half-life 374,000 years, alpha decay to U-238) (Periodic tables show an atomic mass of 244 for plutonium, suggesting Pu-244 as the most stable isotope with the longest half-life – 82 million years.

Can plutonium be man made?

Plutonium is considered a man-made element, although scientists have found trace amounts of naturally occurring plutonium produced under highly unusual geologic circumstances.

How much power did the DeLorean Time Machine need?

Although you may not have remembered the date, you've probably heard of Doc's DeLorean, which takes 1.21 gigawatts (GW) of power to travel through time.

How many homes will 30 gigawatts power?

The President set a bold goal of deploying 30 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes with clean energy, support 77,000 jobs, and spur private investment up and down the supply chain.

How many windmills does it take to produce 1 gigawatt?

One gigawatt is equal to 412 utility-scale wind turbines, and is enough to power 110 million LED lights, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Can you power the entire United States with solar panels?

“If you wanted to power the entire United States with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah,” he explained. “You only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States….

How many solar panels would it take to power the US?

Therefore, about 7.85 billion individual solar panels, each providing about 350W per hour, are necessary to power the whole USA.

How many solar panels are needed to power 1000 homes?

It takes 32 acres of solar power panels to meet the demands of 1,000 homes, according to a new study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. By comparison, imagine solar power panels covering a space about three times the size of the 12-acre Civic Center Park downtown, or 16 city blocks.

How many gigawatts is a thunderstorm?

Because lightning bolts vary in voltage and current, a more average calculation would be 10 gigawatts.

How much is a jigowatt?

A gigawatt (pronunciated "Jigowatt" in the movie) was a large amount of electricity, equivalent to 1 billion watts.

What is 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.

Is lightning AC or DC?

Second, lightning is a direct current (DC) that would require it to be converted to alternating current (AC) so it could be used for lights and other equipment.

Does dark lightning exist?

First reported in 1994, dark lightning is estimated to flash around the world about a thousand times each day. But scientists have only a hazy understanding of how it initiates. They generally agree dark lightning is sparked by the electric fields generated by thunderstorms and lightning bolts.

Is A lightning bolt Hotter Than The Sun?

In fact, lightning can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).