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Choose carefully (startrek.website)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 16 points 2 years ago (6 children)

While I agree, most people know tera- at this point. Most people probably do not know zetta- yet.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Most of us aren't used to "terrawatts" though. Is that like one Earth worth of watts? One watt as measured on Earth? The definition of watt culturally accepted by Earthlings?

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    You wouldn't find a terawatt in everyday usage, but a terawatt-hour is pretty commonplace when talking about the energy usage of entire populations.

    This Reuters article states US power demand will climb to "4,027 billion kWh in 2022." Yeah, just say 4 PWh. Or even 4,027 TWh. It's a little more easily digested.

    It's already an incomprehensably high number. No matter which way you state it is going to fly over peoples heads.

    And the entire electricity consumption of the planet is something like 25.5 petawatt-houts.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Oh that's super interesting and I did not know that, but I was riffing off the double R in "terrawatt," instead of "terawatt."

    Like "tera" describes an order of magnitude, but "terra" means "earth," as in "terra firma," "terra nova," or "terran."

    So I guess you could say that 25.5 petawatt-hours = 25,500 terawatt-hours = 1 terrawatt-hour.

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