Ben Ten weaponry question.

[Enigma]

Watching the show has been a guilty pleasure for me for a while, but today I noticed something. The latest episode had Ben, Gwen, Kevin and some dude named Tack were being trained to be plumbers. In one of their courses, they were taught to use one of the latest weapons available to the Plumbers. I forgot the name of the energy weapon but the teacher said that AFAIK (but I may be wrong) the yield was 3 petawatts. I had to look up the conversion and it came up to ~717KT. Kinda excessive for an infantry rifle? The rifle showed nowhere near that kind of energy when used. Or could the 3 petawatts be the energy capacity?

Is this another case of writers not knowing what they are doing?

[Rabid]

Maybe that's "3 Petawatt of output during the X microseconds/nanoseconds the weapon fire", which would be somehow realistic :

We have Petawatt lasers nowaday, it's just that they are big (the size of a building).

[Enigma]

Maybe that's "3 Petawatt of output during the X microseconds/nanoseconds the weapon fire", which would be somehow realistic :

We have Petawatt lasers nowaday, it's just that they are big (the size of a building).

But wouldn't that increase the overall firepower? If the weapons fire lasted for a second each burst wouldn't it result in a greater yield than 3 petawatts?

[Sarevok]

Maybe it did not fire for more than a nanosecond duration ? It may look like a long duration pulse to the naked eye but thats just an effect on the air the laser passed through.

Real world petawatt laser don't actually fire longer than very small fractions of a second. To fire a petawatt level laser for a full second would require more electrical power than the entire world produces.

[Cykeisme]

Or could the 3 petawatts be the energy capacity?

Watts are the SI unit for power. Joules are the SI unit for energy.

But wouldn't that increase the overall firepower? If the weapons fire lasted for a second each burst wouldn't it result in a greater yield than 3 petawatts?

Yield means an amount of energy, not power output.
If the weapons fire lasted for one second each burst, then the yield per shot would be exactly 3 petajoules.


As an aside, it's sort of silly to rate a weapon by its wattage, if it can only sustain that power output for a tiny fraction of a second.. it could have an output of 3 petawatts, but only for a very brief flash. Silly, but it's the only logical way to rationalize the show's statement.

[Batman]

Depends on why you're doing it. Now in the context presented it definitely makes no sense and is likely one more case of the writers having no Valendamned clue what PW firepower actually entails, but when you're a research group trying to get your financing renewed on your DEW/particle weapon/whatever gun work, mentioning PW level firepower (while forgetting to mention the little factoid that you can't maintain firing for more than a femtosecond) is a pretty good idea, given that the guys deciding your financing likely as not have no idea that figure is pretty much meaningless without a duration

[Enigma]

Or could the 3 petawatts be the energy capacity?

Watts are the SI unit for power. Joules are the SI unit for energy.

But wouldn't that increase the overall firepower? If the weapons fire lasted for a second each burst wouldn't it result in a greater yield than 3 petawatts?

Yield means an amount of energy, not power output.
If the weapons fire lasted for one second each burst, then the yield per shot would be exactly 3 petajoules.

I keep getting confused with the two.

As an aside, it's sort of silly to rate a weapon by its wattage, if it can only sustain that power output for a tiny fraction of a second.. it could have an output of 3 petawatts, but only for a very brief flash. Silly, but it's the only logical way to rationalize the show's statement.

Nevertheless, isn't still overkill for a energy rifle to have a power output of 3 petawatts???

[Hawkwings]

Not if the total energy is the same as, say, a .50 cal bullet. watts = joules/second. If the time is very very small, then the power will be very large for the same amount of energy.

[Batman]

Though for a PW weapon that would have to be immensely small (isn't that sort of a contradiction in terms? ). For a GJ (already pretty bigass for something that's supposedly an infantry weapon), the firing duration would be all of a microsecond. The aforementioned .50 bullet IIRC has an energy of about 19KJ when fired from an M2, giving a roughly equivalent burst from that Ben 10 weapon a duration of about 6.3 picoseconds. That's pretty damned short

[Enigma]

Though for a PW weapon that would have to be immensely small (isn't that sort of a contradiction in terms? ). For a GJ (already pretty bigass for something that's supposedly an infantry weapon), the firing duration would be all of a microsecond. The aforementioned .50 bullet IIRC has an energy of about 19KJ when fired from an M2, giving a roughly equivalent burst from that Ben 10 weapon a duration of about 6.3 picoseconds. That's pretty damned short

When fired, the beam lasted longer than that but less than a second. But going by memory, the RoF is 2/sec?

[Batman]

Assuming the discharge lasted a tenth of a second and the power rating is per discharge, that's 3E14J delivered, or roughly 71KT. Unless that weapon has an upper double figure km range, I strongly discourage using it
If the 3PW is time averaged and your refire rate is correct, we're up to 1.5PJ per shot, or roughly 359KT. Since Ben 10 IIRC happens in in a setting that largely seems to mimick the real world (at least on the Earth side of things), yes, I think we can safely say for an infantry weapon, that's somewhat excessive.

[Srelex]

Perhaps it refers to a maximum yield? Any evidence of adjustability?

[Connor MacLeod]

Would someone please post the full context of the quote/capability being discussed? It's very hard to rationalize it without first hand evidence, because text often depends on context and in my experience people sometimes forget important details in conveying the information (or just don't realize important points. It's very easy to miss something if you aren't aware it is important, as I know from personal experience.)

also so we just avoid conflict - I am not saying anyone is stupid or hiding evidence, I'm just saying its possible there is something key we are missing here.

[Enigma]

Would someone please post the full context of the quote/capability being discussed? It's very hard to rationalize it without first hand evidence, because text often depends on context and in my experience people sometimes forget important details in conveying the information (or just don't realize important points. It's very easy to miss something if you aren't aware it is important, as I know from personal experience.)

also so we just avoid conflict - I am not saying anyone is stupid or hiding evidence, I'm just saying its possible there is something key we are missing here.

Unfortunately I don't know the name of the episode. I'll try to look it up somewhere and if I can find it online.

[Enigma]

Did a quick google then to youtube and it's the episode called "Basic Training". The Magister says that the rifle is capable of delivering a maximum energy burst of 3 petawatts. Judging by Gwen's and Kevin's use of the rifles, it looks like they had a RoF of 2 to 3 per second.

Here's the episode in question. Fast forward to 6:20.

[Batman]

The firers had. Doesn't tell us much about the firing rate of the weapon, technically, though so far that's of course all we have to work with.
I can't time the duration of the actual discharge any better than it's below two 10ths of a second, so that would give us a firepower of somewhere upwards of 143KT per bolt, or if we use the 3 shots/s and assume the 3PW is time averaged, 239KT per bolt. That's some very resilient practice targets they've got

[Connor MacLeod]

Did a quick google then to youtube and it's the episode called "Basic Training". The Magister says that the rifle is capable of delivering a maximum energy burst of 3 petawatts. Judging by Gwen's and Kevin's use of the rifles, it looks like they had a RoF of 2 to 3 per second.

Here's the episode in question. Fast forward to 6:20.

YEah.. it was kinda what I thought. "maximum energy burst" doesn't really suggest it fires at that setting all the time. Rather it's probably what it's capable of at highest setting, since the target's weren't displaying the results of petajoules or even terajoules of energy imparted to the target (even if we assume super material, what is going to happen to the enviroment.)

Recoil issues make the "laser" idea even more unlikely. Petawatt or terawatt sustained outputs for a massless beam weapon are INSANE (1e4 kg*m/s for terawatt level. Figure out what that would mean for a 40-60 kg person firing it, or a rifle that can't weigh more than 4-5 kg tops.)

You can choose to rationalize it one of two ways. It's delivering its energy over a very small period of time, however this assumes it works like an actual laser or particle beam weapon, and since it's your tpyical sci fi "slowly moving visible pulse" this is unlikely.

The second interpretation is that the pulses are some sort of shell or shot that contains the energy. It would explain the visual inconsistencies better more likely, and not have problems with timing or recoil (think of it as a rifle firing nuke shells.) That said, I would still consider it unlikely that the damn thing is chucking petajoules or terajoules fo eenrgy around routinely, given the potentially hazardous effects such would have on the enviroment, so "watts" still probably is not joules/second even if it's firing some sort of magic shell.

[Srelex]

He said it's the maximum energy burst. That implies that it has settings. Therefore, there's not much of an issue here.

[Batman]

Given the discrepancy between the visuals and the alleged maximum firepower of the weapon, yes there is. We're talking a five to ten orders of magnitude difference here. Variable yield weapon or not, this isn't stun/kill/magic away, it's modern day handgun penetrator level vs makes Hiroshima look like a firecracker.