Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Isn't it weird that we'll never (ever?) talk about lightnings as a potential renewable energy source ? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Seems to my ignorant eyes that we could always somehow split the power received into more manageable units, even if it has to be splitted a million times, 🤷‍♂️.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lightning has a peak power of 1TW for 30 microseconds according to Wikipedia, corresponding to an energy content of about 8000 Watt-hours. That is enough to run a 100 watt conventional light bulb for 80 hours, so not actually much energy. You would need to capture about half a million lightning strikes a second if you wanted to power the world that way, for example.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I thought a bolt of lightning can produce 1.21 gigawatts? Doc Brown said this in Back to the Future movie.