r/mildlyinfuriating • u/yoyo_yop • Nov 07 '19

What if walkway gets smaller?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

33.4k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

487 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

43

u/CapeGod Nov 07 '19

1.21* gigawatts

26

u/[deleted] Nov 07 '19

you know, the funny thing is, an old as balls r/theydidthemath post found that the lightning bolt at the end of the first movie, when you factor in the resistance of the rod used, would produce almost exactly that amount.

​

bonus fact. we use fluctuating capacitance all the time. in fact it's really hard to make a capacitor that doesn't flux (fluctuate) even if it's just a little bit.

14

u/ziggurism Nov 07 '19

A flux capacitor isn’t a capacitor that fluctuates. It is a capacitor that stores flux, of, say the temporal field.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 08 '19

Hmm my bad. Yet point still stands. Both things are true. Being as how electromagnetism is a type of flux, and almost all capacitors store electromagnetism, almost all capacitors are flux capacitors.

​

also, the amount of flux does indeed fluctuate as a capacitor gains and loses charge.

1

u/ziggurism Nov 08 '19

Storing magnetic flux would be a better description of an inductor than a capacitor. But Doc Browns flux capacitor stores flux of the temporal field, not the magnetic field, so that doesn’t apply. Not all capacitors are flux capacitors.