Completely pointless Thought Of The Day thread

[A Meat]

people use abstruse, obtuse and obscure fairly interchangeably, making the "correct" use case for these words quite arcane

[Shell Game]

people use abstruse, obtuse and obscure fairly interchangeably, making the "correct" use case for these words quite arcane

this is one esoteric thought

[Victor Laszlo]

When 1.21 gigawatts of power went through the flux capacitor, what would the temperature reach inside the Delorean?

[Macho Masc Sangy Savage]

When 1.21 gigawatts of power went through the flux capacitor, what would the temperature reach inside the Delorean?

If 1W = 3.412 BTU/hr
1.21GW = 3,821,440,000 BTU/hr

Beryllium needs 583 BTU/lb to turn into a liquid, and is the highest. Steel, the main component in cars, needs 260 BTU/lb.

[Victor Laszlo]

When 1.21 gigawatts of power went through the flux capacitor, what would the temperature reach inside the Delorean?

If 1W = 3.412 BTU/hr
1.21GW = 3,821,440,000 BTU/hr

Beryllium needs 583 BTU/lb to turn into a liquid, and is the highest. Steel, the main component in cars, needs 260 BTU/lb.

Right, but most of that energy went into time travel, right?  The missing variable is how efficient is the flux capacitor?  I feel like even if it's 90% efficient, which would be insanely high, then Marty is still fused to what's left of the seat.

So if we assume a 90% efficient flux capacitor, and based on a lightning strike and the scenes in the movie that the energy was applied over 1 sec, that means that 106,151 BTU was lost to heat.  The average air volume inside a small car is about 100 cubic feet.

I see that 1 BTU will raise 55 cubic feet of air by 1 degree, so let's round and say 2 BTU will raise the temperature of a 100 cubic foot car interior by 1 degree.  Therefore the temperature of the car went up 53,075 degrees?  That's 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun.  Even at 99% efficient Marty is fused to the seat.

This can't be right, but also seems really right.  Someone more sober than me please check the math, this is important. 

[Macho Masc Sangy Savage]

When 1.21 gigawatts of power went through the flux capacitor, what would the temperature reach inside the Delorean?

If 1W = 3.412 BTU/hr
1.21GW = 3,821,440,000 BTU/hr

Beryllium needs 583 BTU/lb to turn into a liquid, and is the highest. Steel, the main component in cars, needs 260 BTU/lb.

Right, but most of that energy went into time travel, right?  The missing variable is how efficient is the flux capacitor?  I feel like even if it's 90% efficient, which would be insanely high, then Marty is still fused to what's left of the seat.

So if we assume a 90% efficient flux capacitor, and based on a lightning strike and the scenes in the movie that the energy was applied over 1 sec, that means that 106,151 BTU was lost to heat.  The average air volume inside a small car is about 100 cubic feet.

I see that 1 BTU will raise 55 cubic feet of air by 1 degree, so let's round and say 2 BTU will raise the temperature of a 100 cubic foot car interior by 1 degree.  Therefore the temperature of the car went up 53,075 degrees?  That's 5 times hotter than the surface of the sun.  Even at 99% efficient Marty is fused to the seat.

This can't be right, but also seems really right.  Someone more sober than me please check the math, this is important.

Someone who is good at math please my brain is starving

[chai tea latte]

My napkin math during this meeting I'm supposed to be paying attention to says that, assuming that:

NSFW content. Click to show.

-a body temperature of 107F is fatal
-all energy from the flux capacitor is either spent on time travel or dissipated as light and heat
-the delorean has an interior volume of 100 cubic ft
-the heat capacity of air is 700 joules/kg
-the air in the delorean weighs 3.39kg
-no increase of more than 4.65 degrees Kelvin inside the car is compatible with human life

With two pages of "notes" taken, I theorize that the efficiency of the time travel device must exceed 99.9998% in order to not kill its occupants. I also theorize that waste energy beyond 2,377 joules of waste heat / second would act as a fatal threshold.

[xX_sp00ks_Xx]

Thanks everyone for obviating the need for me to make a Quora account, I knew I was right to dismiss that stupid pop-up

[Salubrious Rex]

Look, I'm not a scientist but what if it sends the heat back in time and melts a cowboy or a dinosaur?

[Victor Laszlo]

no increase of more than 4.65 degrees Kelvin inside the car is compatible with human life

That's 8 degrees F, right?  Like I think Marty will die from burn trauma not from hyperthermia.  By the time you get his internal temp to 107 the temp of the air has already scalded his airway shut.  Air temperature not body temperature is the killer here.

This is fun though! Yay!

[Lemon]

Sitting here eating my dinner, thinking about that one Megadeth song where the lyrics are titles to other Megadeth songs.

https://genius.com/Megadeth-victory-lyrics

[chai tea latte]

no increase of more than 4.65 degrees Kelvin inside the car is compatible with human life

That's 8 degrees F, right?  Like I think Marty will die from burn trauma not from hyperthermia.  By the time you get his internal temp to 107 the temp of the air has already scalded his airway shut.  Air temperature not body temperature is the killer here.

This is fun though! Yay!

Just under 9 degrees F. Yes, it is fun!

Modelling the air temperature would have required a more complicated formula , so I just didn't. (I would have had to model the air, and then the passengers, separately, and deal with heat exchange.) but rest assured that per my math, all of the moisture in the air evaporates, which presumably is not good for the person who has moisture in their lungs, etc.

I agree he dies of burn trauma. To prevent burn trauma, the air itself has to absorb VERY LITTLE ENERGY. as air REQUIRES very little energy to get hotter (700 joules to the kilogram-degree Kelvin), this is extremely difficult. If the Delorean were underwater, it would allow for nearly five times as much waste heat to be expelled before Marty would die of burn trauma.

That said, he also would have drowned much earlier.

[chai tea latte]

Thanks everyone for obviating the need for me to make a Quora account, I knew I was right to dismiss that stupid pop-up

if you make the account you can stop them from sending you those emails

[Penultimatum]

It turns out this is a trick question- A gigawatt is a measure of power, not energy, so you’ll only ever get the heating rate. You need to know for how long the gigawatt of power is applied to the car in order to figure out how much it heats up. For example, 1.21 GW of power applied for one second would mean a 1.21 gigajoules of energy imparted into the Delorean, which is nearly the energy contained in a typical lightning bolt.  However, if it was applied for say 1 millisecond it’d only be 1.21 megajoules, which is about half the amount of food energy in a big mac. So the period of time the burst of power needs to be supplied to the flux capacitor is what determines whether Marty Mc Fly would be totally raw or well-done.
edit: it’s worth mentioning that there have been several instances of cars being struck by lightning with the occupants surviving, so even in the case it’s the larger energy estimate it doesn’t necessarily mean that Marty Mc Fly would turn into Marty Mc Fried

[Emperor Jack Chick]

Sitting here eating my dinner, thinking about that one Megadeth song where the lyrics are titles to other Megadeth songs.

https://genius.com/Megadeth-victory-lyrics

I used to think this was really cool when I was 13. :(