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Yottawatts

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Ok the first thing that went through my mind when I saw the word Yottawatts was that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine uses the phrase...yadda, yadda, yadda...

But its actually about powers of ten and electrical power (watts). I was researching the amount of solar insolation the earth receives from the sun (174 Petawatts) and ran across this page in WikiPedia full of variations on my namesake.

By the way, Petawatts has nothing to do with my disdain for the sometimes crazy tactics of the animal rights group.

So have a few watts on me:

Yoctowatt (10-24 watt)

Zeptowatt (10-21 watt)

Attowatt (10-18 watt)

Femtowatt (10-15 watt)

  • 2.5 fW - Tech: minimum discernible signal at the antenna terminal of a good FM radio receiver
  • 10 fW (-110 dBm) - Tech: approximate lower limit of power reception on digital spread-spectrum cell phones

Picowatt (10-12 watt)

  • 1 pW - BioMed: average power consumption of a human cell
  • 2.5 pW - BioMed: Sound intensity per square centimeter for average human threshold of hearing at 1000 Hz; 1 phon or 0 dB SPL
  • 150 pW - BioMed: Power entering a human eye from a 100 watt lamp 1 km away

Nanowatt (10-9 watt)

  • 2-15nW - Tech: Power consumption of some PIC Microcontroller chips such as the PIC12F683 when in "sleep" mode. (actual consumption when sleeping depends on voltage supply used, see data sheet, Electrical Characteristics section).

Microwatt (10-6 watt)

Milliwatt (10-3 watt)

  • 5 mW - Tech: laser in a CD-ROM drive
  • 5-10 mW - Tech: laser in a DVD player
  • 100 mW - Tech: laser in a CD-R drive

Watt

1 Watt = 1 amp x 1 volt of electrical power

  • 5 W - Legal: maximum power output of a CB or hand-held radio transmitter
  • 20-40 W - BioMed: approximate power consumption of the human brain
  • 30-40 W - Tech: the power of the typical household tube light
  • 60 W - Tech: the power of the typical household light bulb
  • 82 W - Tech: peak power consumption of Pentium 4 CPU
  • 100 W - BioMed: approximate average power used by the human body
  • 120 W - Tech: power output of 1 m2 solar panel in full sunlight
  • 253 W (2,215 kWh/year) - Geo: per capita average power use of the world in 2001
  • 290 W - Units: approximately 1000 BTU/hour
  • 300-400 W - Tech: typical PC power supply
  • 400 W - Tech: legal limit of power output of an amateur radio station in the United Kingdom
  • 500 W - BioMed: power output of a person working hard physically
  • 745.7 W - Units: 1 horsepower
  • 750 W - Astro: the amount of sunshine falling on a square metre of the Earth's surface on a clear day
  • 900 W - BioMed: power output of a healthy human (non-athlete) averaged over the first 6s of a 30s cycle sprint. [1]

Kilowatt (103 watt)

  • 1.366 kW - Astro: power received from the Sun at the Earth's orbit by one square metre
  • 1.39 kW (12.2 MWh/year) - Geo: per capita average power use in the U.S. in 2003
  • 1.5 kW - Tech: legal limit of power output of an amateur radio station in the United States
  • up to 2 kW - BioMed: approximate short time power output of sprinting professional cyclists
  • 1 kW to 2 kW - Tech: heat output of a domestic electric kettle.
  • 3.3-6.6 kW - Eco: average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer of ocean [2]
  • 30 kW - power generated by the four motors of GEN H-4 one man helicopter
  • 16-32 kW - Eco: average photosynthetic power output per square kilometer of land [3]
  • 50 kW to 100 kW - Tech: ERP of clear channel AM
  • 40 kW to 200 kW - Tech: approximate range of power output of typical automobiles
  • 167 kW - Tech: power consumption of UNIVAC 1 computer
  • 250 kW - Tech: highest allowed ERP for an FM band radio station in the United States.
  • 250 kW to 800 kW - Tech: approximate range of power output of 'Supercars'

Megawatt (106 watt)

The productive capacity of electrical generators operated by utility companies is often measured in MW. Few things can sustain the transfer or consumption of energy on this scale; some of these events or entities include: lightning strikes, naval craft (such as aircraft carriers and submarines), engineering hardware, and some scientific research equipment (such as the supercollider and large lasers).

For reference, about 10,000 100-watt lightbulbs or 5,000 computer systems would be needed to draw 1 megawatt. Also, 1 MW equals approximately 1341 horsepower. Modern high-powered diesel-electric railroad locomotives typically have a peak power output of 3–5 MW, whereas a typical modern nuclear power plant produces on the order of 500–2000 MW peak output.

Gigawatt (109 watt)

Terawatt (1012 watt)

  • 1.7 TW - Geo: average electrical power consumption of the world in 2001
  • 3.327 TW - Geo: average total (gas, electricity, etc) power consumption of the U.S. in 2001
  • 13.5 TW - Geo: average total power consumption of the human world in 2001
  • 44 TW - Geo: average total heat flux from earth's interior (See figure in http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/9/7/16/1)
  • 75 TW - Eco: based on global net primary production (= biomass production) via photosynthesis
  • 50 to 200 TW - Weather: rate of heat energy release by a hurricane
  • In "Star Trek: The Next Generation", the warp core of the fictitious Enterprise-D was able to produce a maximum power output into the Terawatt range.

Petawatt (1015 watt)

Exawatt (1018 watt)

  • 1 EW - Astro: Approximate power generated between the surfaces of Jupiter and its moon Io due to Jupiter's tremendous magnetic field.

Zettawatt (1021 watt)

Yottawatt (1024 watt)

  • 5.3 YW - Tech: Power produced by the Tsar Bomba fusion bomb, the most powerful device ever made
  • 386 YW - Astro: Luminosity of the Sun

Greater than Yottawatt


Posted by Anthony Watts on December 8, 2006 02:11 PM |

Comments

And all named after James Watt.

An interesting thing I learned in engineering and math classes in college was that many of our units are named after scientists and engineers. This is especially true in electonics.

Some examples... volts (Volta), amps-ampere (Ampere), farads-charge capacity (Faraday), coloumbs- a unit of charge (Coloumb), just to name a few.

You often run across the same names when learning both higher math and physics, which shows how brilliant many of these guys were.

Lon

**** Moderators response:

BTW James Watt invented the steam engine amongst other things.

And a few others names like Roentgens, for radiation.(some bunker humor going on there) Roentgen discovered the X-ray.

On the bunker, are you still "sheltering in place"? Do you need an air-drop of Celebration Ales?

Posted by: Lon | December 8, 2006 02:44 PM

The Tsar Bomba wasn't even as powerful as a small hurricane but you have it in the Yottawatt range with the sun.

Posted by: Dan | October 19, 2007 04:03 PM

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