StarDestroyer.Net BBS

 Post subject: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 01:10am 

One day Q decides to pop in on you yet again. But this time, he's not looking to uproot your life by placing you in ancient Egypt. Today, he has decided to grant you a great gift.

He presents you a 10 cm, 20 kg, metallic cube. Running down each face of the cube, are 4 glowing lines, each separated by 2 cm. On each face,two are orange, one is pink, and the last is green.

Q explains to you that the cube is an electrical power generator. By dynamically creating an appropriate socket, is able to accept any sort of input and supply electricity to any sort of device. The maximum power output of the generator has been determined by your post count.

0 - 5000 posts:

A kilowatt.

5000 - 20000 posts:

A megawatt.

20000 - 100000 posts:

A gigawatt.

100000+ posts:

A terrawatt.


Q refuses to change the colours of the glowing lines. What do you do?

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 01:35am 

Ask if this is even theoretically comprehensible technology or if it's litterally a magic box.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 02:09am 

Kind of pointless bothering to list 100,000 posts isn't it?

Anyway a 1 GW power source would be a nice gift provided it won't kill me. I'd lease it to be plugged into a webserver cluster. Even even I charged a mere 1 cent per kilowatt hour I'd make 10,000 dollars an hour which would be a very nice retirement package.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 02:29am 

I mean, I guess I have a cheap way to run my electronics, but I'm not sure what else I'm going to do with a spare kilowatt (per what time unit?)

And how am I supposed to move a box 18x denser than lead?

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 02:36am 

I guess you could do like... bicep curls until you are able to lift 20 kilograms.

If you're going to do that I'd recommend you iterate your workout mostly by increasing the reps, not by upping the weight.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 04:43am 

Oh, I missed this:



That's a good question. There's no wholly accepted standard in the scientific community for what time unit a watt corresponds to. I may have to rethink this scenario.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 05:01am 

I'm pretty sure the power companies are required to buy back any excess electricity you generate. So, I plug it in to the power system and enjoy my small amount of extra income, I doubt a kilowatt will net me much, even if it's being generated 24/7.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 06:10am 

No, there is no time unit required. One kilowatt is equal to one thousand joules of energy per second.

One kilowatt is sufficient to power a single US household, if you average it out. In other words, if you can arrange a buyback system like people do with solar panels, you probably never need to pay an electricity bill ever again.

Some useful figures:

1,000 Watts divided by 20 kilograms is equal to a power density of 50 J/s/kg. This means that if you leave it running for 7 seconds, it has equalled the energy density of a capacitor. 33 minutes, and it's equal to a lead-acid battery. Leave it running for a month, and it's equal to hydrogen. If you can get it up to a terawatt and run it for two days, it's equal to antimatter.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 06:45am 

You can't just dodge a legitimate question by pretending the subject matter doesn't exist. So I'll ask again- per what time limit?

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 07:20am 

I'm not dodging the question, I'm trying to explain to you that unless you're asking how quickly it can ramp up to full power, the answer is "per no time unit". The device can produce one kilowatt of power, or one kilowatt-hour of energy per hour.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 07:21am 

I think it's pretty obvious to everyone that that was the question.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 07:42am 

Tell dad, who is an electrical engineer, and plug it into the apartment's household.

We now never have to pay the electricity bill ever again.

That's pretty much it. I'm certain that the lines represent something, but I am unsure what. I might poke it with a multimetre or something.

The only thing I would be worried about is radiation. Something that size producing so much power is bound to be nuclear or even more powerful.



Why not? Sure, it will be a bit of a bitch to do so, but it's just 20 kilograms. That's a bit heavy, but not impossible to lift. I have a 7.8 kilogram benchgrinder and it's not hard to lift.
At worst, you will need to fashion something to help you lift it.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:21am 

Hook this up to my PC and stereo. Thsoe two drink in a kilowatt between them. And since both of them run for most of the day, this greatly lowers my electricity bill. We in Wales use a pre-paid credit system, which means I can go much longer between topping it up while still claiming regular amounts of cash of my parents. Hence, I can drink more at the pub. Wooo.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:53am 

No no, Grumman's right. It was past midnight local time when I wrote the post and I forgot that a watt is the rate at which you generate/use energy. A Watt is a Joule per second. (W = J/s).

So a kilowatt * hour is a measurement of energy because it cancels out the time dimension (roughly 3.6 megajoules, wiki tells me).

I went back to edit the post last night when I realized my boneheaded mistake, but the edit window had closed.

I'm just surprised you guys are still arguing about it instead of someone beating me with a cluebat for basic physics failure.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:56am 

The post counts are a bit inflated but I guess I don't post that much so I miss out on the free income that Q is providing me.

At 1 kilowatt I get an external power jack installed for a little up front cost and then save ~$200 a month on electricity.

Then I fume about how elevated post count requirements cheated me out of a roughly $200,000 per month income.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 10:59am 

Nice, a Gigawatt generator.

I ask Q is this magic, or technology that humanity will be able to duplicate? If it's the later, sell it to a research firm and retire.
If it's magic, buy an electric car, and replace the battery with this.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 11:07am 

I would have used a different post count requirement. Instead of jumping from kW-GW-TW, perhaps starting at 10 kW, then 100, then 1Gw, then 10 Gw and so on. Oh well.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 11:46am 

Yes, one terawatt-level cubes are going to be scary to have around. I mean, isn't that what the entire planet's worth of power generation? Or at the very least, the level where you can practically run entire cities?

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 11:48am 

You realize that's the joke, right?

Go back and read Zab's post again:

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 11:57am 

With a loan you can create your own power company.

As for me and my megawatt, I'd have the house connected to it and somehow make a deal with the power company and connect the cube to the power grid so I'd get some sweet money. lol

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 12:49pm 

Just had a look; the electric output of the entire world is roughly 2 TW, so yes, that is quite a bit of power that thing would put out.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 01:55pm 

With my 1kw generator I get an electrician to rig into the main and power my house and sell the excess to the grid, shouldn’t be that much cash but probably a few hundred £ annual income. I also invest in an electric car and get that rigged so it can be run from the device which I switch between the two depending on where I am.

I don't care one of the lines is pink.

Why is carrying 20kg a problem? Obviously you may want to design some sort of carrying bag rather than just pick up a metal cube but 20kg, even when so dense isn’t exactly a problem is it ? It’s just the weight of a heavy suitcase.

Also the scale is a bit extreme, one kw is just enough for you to use personally but the immediate jump to megawatt precludes anything other than industrial use or powering your own ion spacecraft. I don't think many people have one of them though and setting up a power company may be a bit difficult for the average guy.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 03:30pm 

With my measly single kilowatt i'd have to just plug it into my house and shave about 90% of my annual electric bill. Why did it just jump form Kilowatt to megawatt?! that's a crapton of energy to be produced out of nothing.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 05:13pm 

If you did nothing more than sell back the power at US California rates ($0.12 per Kw/h)
Kilowatt: $1,051.20 annually
Megawatt: $1,051,200.00 annually
Gigawatt: $1,051,200,000.00 annually

I salute our new millionaires and billionaires, you lucky bastards.

 Post subject: Re: You own an electricity generator (RAR!)

Posted: 2012-01-14 05:18pm 

...what about the Terawatt guys?