Expressing large ammounts of power to regular people

[Redleader34]

I was talking to my mother about the amount of power an asteroid impact would cause, and about 5 minuets through the conversation, it hit me, most people cannot relate large ammounts of powwer to their ways of thinking. As I went back to my room, and started doing some math, it hit me.. Expressing power in trems of food. calories, or Kilo calories are common, so why not us a common food, such as big macs to express the ammount o power in something. it would be a nice way to scae down "asplodes a planet" to a regular units. There are 560 000 calories in a Big Mac. There are 4.184 joules in a calorie, so when you mulpy the numbers, you get 2 343 040 millon joules in a big mac. Placing that in sciencetific notation, thats 2.34304*10^6 or 2.34304E6 joules. Now it takes according to the death star page 3.7E32 joules to explode a planet at bare minum. the divison sugests that it takes 1.579145042E26 Big Macs to explode a planet. In normal numbers thats 15 791 450 420 000 000 000 000 000 or... 15 octillion big macs to explode a planet...

[Magus]

I was talking to my mother about the amount of power an asteroid impact would cause, and about 5 minuets through the conversation, it hit me, most people cannot relate large ammounts of powwer to their ways of thinking. As I went back to my room, and started doing some math, it hit me.. Expressing power in trems of food. calories, or Kilo calories are common, so why not us a common food, such as big macs to express the ammount o power in something. it would be a nice way to scae down "asplodes a planet" to a regular units. There are 560 000 calories in a Big Mac. There are 4.184 joules in a calorie, so when you mulpy the numbers, you get 2 343 040 millon joules in a big mac. Placing that in sciencetific notation, thats 2.34304*10^6 or 2.34304E6 joules. Now it takes according to the death star page 3.7E32 joules to explode a planet at bare minum. the divison sugests that it takes 1.579145042E26 Big Macs to explode a planet. In normal numbers thats 15 791 450 420 000 000 000 000 000 or... 15 octillion big macs to explode a planet...

I don't think this would work at all, because the problem lies not so much in the units as it does the sheer quantity. Average Joe doesn't comprehend just how big 15 octillion of anything is, he knows it's more than a million, or a billion, but not really how much more.

[Superman]

I was talking to my mother about the amount of power an asteroid impact would cause, and about 5 minuets through the conversation, it hit me, most people cannot relate large ammounts of powwer to their ways of thinking. As I went back to my room, and started doing some math, it hit me.. Expressing power in trems of food. calories, or Kilo calories are common, so why not us a common food, such as big macs to express the ammount o power in something. it would be a nice way to scae down "asplodes a planet" to a regular units. There are 560 000 calories in a Big Mac. There are 4.184 joules in a calorie, so when you mulpy the numbers, you get 2 343 040 millon joules in a big mac. Placing that in sciencetific notation, thats 2.34304*10^6 or 2.34304E6 joules. Now it takes according to the death star page 3.7E32 joules to explode a planet at bare minum. the divison sugests that it takes 1.579145042E26 Big Macs to explode a planet. In normal numbers thats 15 791 450 420 000 000 000 000 000 or... 15 octillion big macs to explode a planet...

What the hell brought that conversation up? "Hey mom, can I have some Cheerios?"

"Sure."

"Oh by the way, do you know about the amount of power associated with asteroids that could hit the earth?"

[Darth Servo]

Even in a relatively common denominator like Big Macs, Joe-sixpack still isn't capable of wrapping his mind around a huge number like 1.579145042E26. Most people can't handle much over a million. A lot of people can't even count past ten without taking off their shoes.

[Sriad]

Yes, once you get past trillions of something (and often well before, it's hard even for me to wrap my head around a trillion of something) you'll loose people. Express it in Hiroshima destroying A-bombs, once you get into millions of those, say "an A-bomb going off in every house in Texas" or whatever reflects an accurate number.

Of course, a lot of people don't understand what nukes are really about either, but hey.

[brianeyci]

Just because people roll their eyes when you say 1e50, that doesn't mean there is something wrong in their way of thinking, I mean come on. Have any of you ever seen a trillion people together? For the situation in the op, I think it has nothing to do with how big the number is, but that they don't understand what power means in science. I certainly can't visualize a trillion things, but I can write 1e12. I think this whole they can't count to a big number thing is made up just to make so-called "joe sixpack" seem more stupid than they are, or that they "can't count big numbers." Of course sometimes like that US congressman who said he couldn't understand what the huge US debt actually meant because the number was too big, but I doubt your mom is actually thinking like that. But even that story with the US congressperson was in a newspaper, and I bet anything the reporter took that story to make the congressperson look more stupid than he really was and took the quote out of context somehow, since that's what reporters do (but I'm too lazy to look it up in N&P right now, besides forgetting what keyword to search for).

Oh and by the way talk to me and mention 1.579145042e26 or anything even close to that and you'll get rolled eyes, and not just because that ignores significant digits. Math majors like two numbers, one and zero, and the occasional two. Oh, and all the radians of course, pi/2, pi, pi/6, etc. Counting high does not a scientifically literate or even educated person make, I don't see why it's anything to brag about at all. I don't remember all the SI prefixes at all, if I need it I can look it up (which I never will, nor does average joe so he doesn't waste his time learning it, big deal, more important things in life like getting money and sex).

[Winston Blake]

I was talking to my mother about the amount of power an asteroid impact would cause, and about 5 minuets through the conversation, it hit me, most people cannot relate large ammounts of powwer to their ways of thinking. As I went back to my room, and started doing some math, it hit me.. Expressing power in trems of food. calories, or Kilo calories are common, so why not us a common food, such as big macs to express the ammount o power in something.

[snip calories and joules]

Perhaps she was confused that you were talking about power and using calories.

[Redleader34]

meh I converted, and after further thought, I think a better unit would be converting kilowats into joules, and using major cities as a way of expressig large ammounts of power. To Superman, I was talking about what would happen if Aphos (the asteroid) would hit earth

[General Zod]

It probably has more to do with the fact that people trying to show they know how much power is released by an asteroid impact explosion in casual conversation comes off as a know-it-all, and the person listening doesn't give a damn rather than the person they're talking to isn't capable of understanding it.

[General Zod]

Ghetto edit: It's also considerably easier to get the point across when explaining it as something they can relate to. Saying "It's enough to level a few dozen city blocks" is easier than saying "1eXXX joules of energy" and making sure they know what you're talking about.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I'd like to see anyone here comprehend 100,000 first, of anything macroscale from a car to a person. That number is itself a massive figure to put into practical terms, even if it's just a number of steps you take a week or kilometres you drive every few years.

When you get into millions and billions, the mind simply cannot fathom what that means other than as an abstract unit in maths. Mentioning trillions or octillions is simply pie in the sky at that point.

[Ender]

I'd like to see anyone here comprehend 100,000 first, of anything macroscale from a car to a person. That number is itself a massive figure to put into practical terms, even if its just a number of steps you take a week or kilometres you drive every few years.

When you get into millions and billions, the mind simply cannot fathom what that means other than as an abstract unit in maths. Mentioning trillions or octillions is simply pie in the sky at that point.

Indeed. Its one of those things like when someone says "you'd have to pay be a billon dollars...", yet if you actually put 500 grand out on the kitchen table the response would be vastly different.

[brianeyci]

Cool AV you made the point I was trying to make in two lines heh heh. I've got to learn to be more concise.

As for very large numbers, what I usually do if I have to visualize them is use rectangles. Even ten thousand is easy to visualize if you see say a straight line of one hundred people, another straight line of one hundred people going perpendicular, and fill it in. Or a million. Maybe a trillion. But I don't see what having that particular ability is anything to brag about.

[Darth Servo]

I'd like to see anyone here comprehend 100,000 first, of anything macroscale from a car to a person.

How about pennies? 100,000 pennies is just $1000 and I can easily comprehend $1000.

[LordShaithis]

Just relate it in Hiroshima bombs. If it's a really big number, relate it in multiples of the total world nuclear arsenal.

[Adrian Laguna]

I do something similar. Imagine five dots in a line, then double the line's length, that's 10. Square the line and you get a 100. Line-up 10 squares and it's a 1000. Then square that line and it's 10,000. At that point my mind's resolution is maxing-out and the mental image at the verge of collapsing.

[Admiral Valdemar]

How about pennies? 100,000 pennies is just $1000 and I can easily comprehend $1000.

That's like saying I can comprehend a trillion trillion galaxies, because I understand one universe. It's a cop out. If you can visually imagine 100,000 pennies, I take my hat off to you, sir. Far harder than just thinking of a cheque for one grand.

Just relate it in Hiroshima bombs. If it's a really big number, relate it in multiples of the total world nuclear arsenal.

And if your movie is called Armageddon, drastically understate the power of the dinosaur killing 'roid impact by stating it only exploded with a million nuclear bombs.

[Adrian Laguna]

Similar to what brianeyci does.

[Darth Servo]

How about pennies? 100,000 pennies is just $1000 and I can easily comprehend $1000.

That's like saying I can comprehend a trillion trillion galaxies, because I understand one universe. It's a cop out. If you can visually imagine 100,000 pennies, I take my hat off to you, sir. Far harder than just thinking of a cheque for one grand.

Who said it had to be a check? I've seen $1000 worth of quarters (and much more) many times. My uncle works for the LA times and he used to be incharge of restocking the paper bins, counting the accumulated change and taking it to the bank.

[Wyrm]

Hmm... Assuming that a Big Mac fits snugly into a cubical box 4 in on a side, then if you inflate the size of a Big Mac 15 octillion times, then you have to get a cube (4 in * (1 ft/12 in) * (1 mi/5,180 ft) * 1.6093 km/mi * (15 octillion)^(1/3) ~=) 26,000 km on a side... So a Big Mac the size of the Earth has enough chemical energy to destroy it like a Death Star.

Talk about a Big Mac Attack!

[Ariphaos]

I'd like to see anyone here comprehend 100,000 first, of anything macroscale from a car to a person. That number is itself a massive figure to put into practical terms, even if it's just a number of steps you take a week or kilometres you drive every few years.

Actually 100,000 isn't too hard, if you break it down into dimensions. Have a hundred people (or whatever) to a side, and stack them ten high. You are now dealing with a system you can visualize, in numbers you can count to in a couple minutes.

Not that your point isn't valid for the sorts of numbers being bandied about here, of course.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Who said it had to be a check? I've seen $1000 worth of quarters (and much more) many times. My uncle works for the LA times and he used to be incharge of restocking the paper bins, counting the accumulated change and taking it to the bank.

Seeing and grasping are entirely different, though. I see billions of stars at night, but I cannot mentally fathom such a number of anything in my mind. While 100,000 is more acceptable, it's still a tricky number to really accept, especially when you visit a sports stadium and see that many people in the flesh. No multiply that by 300 times and you have the United States' population. Now multiply that by 20 times and you have planet Earth's population.

In science, six billion is still a very small number when you think about the truly staggering figures we can get. A googolplex is so big, there's not enough matter in the universe to write it down in standard form. Such numbers are meaningless to us given those scales, but I can say I've seen one, at least in one form of notation.

[Dark Hellion]

Oh no, we are at kantian Schemetism. Run away before the philosophy majors make you start doubting the existence of pants!

[Wyrm]

More people need to watch Powers of Ten. Not only is it a great introduction to the universe of the very big and the very small, it also is a great visual demonstration of how exponential growth or shrinkage compares to linear growth.

Seeing the distance covered in one second by light traced out and contained within the screen, and then having the resulting line trace receeding into nothingness is particularly impressive.

[Winston Blake]

meh I converted, and after further thought, I think a better unit would be converting kilowats into joules, and using major cities as a way of expressig large ammounts of power. To Superman, I was talking about what would happen if Aphos (the asteroid) would hit earth

You mean kilowatt-hours, right? I'm just teasing. Seriously though, if people don't 'get' large quantities of energy, it's probably because they have nothing to compare it to.

Scientifically minded people can be given a number like '5 million joules' and realise that it's worth a couple of hand grenades and could not destroy a whole house. Similarly, 100 megatons is clearly very large if you know about the Tsar Bomba test, or the fact Hiroshima was 15 kt and how it fared. 1e38 J is meaningless unless you've already dealt with similar figures and know that it's far more than enough to destroy the planet, and hence would easily destroy the moon, yet is nowhere close to destroying the sun. Knowing that the moon is about 1.3 light seconds away only becomes meaningful when you know the Earth is 0.04 light seconds across, hence it's like 4cm compared to 1.3m.

It's just a matter of being familiar with the context.