Z-Machine

[Doug1]

 I knew what you ment ZMonkey. I guess you also find the reaction to the link curious. Oh well.
 

[RunningBare]

This machine provides an output pulse of 290 TERAWATTS, in about 100 nanoseconds.  But the kicker to this story is that it only consumes an amount of power equivalent to power 100 average homes for 2 minutes


The kicker is this is not OU, it is storing energy over a period of minutes and releasing that energy over a period of nanoseconds, thats an extremely short pulse compared to 2 minutes charge time.

nanoseconds, 1e-9 seconds , compare that with 2 minutes of energy consumed by 100 average homes.

[Doug1]

So how many watts does 100 homes use for 2 minutes, who's homes are they using to average it by? With out knowing exactly what you are comparing it with for power put in compared to power out you can only assume it is under 100% or at 100%.
  Why mention the output in TW and not the input in KW? None the less the marx gen is interesting. Hard to do i would imagine.

[z.monkey]

OK, Lets do the math...
We will convert the two power readings to Watt Hours.
Let's say that the average American household is using 5 Kilowatts.

5000 Watts X 100 Homes X 2 Minutes (0.034 hours) = 16,666.67 Watt Hours

The Z Machine output is 290 Terawatts  X 100 Nanoseconds  =
                                 (2.9E+14 Watts) X (1.67E-12 Hours)   = 483 Watt Hours

Ding Ding Ding, We have a winner.

RunningBare is RIGHT!  This machine is extraordinarily wasteful.

Looks like I have been hoodwinked by the Man again.

Sorry Stefan, your right too.  This machine should be condemned as a backward thinking waste of taxpayer dollars which is used to research weapons detonators.

You can just delete this whole thread if you want to,

But, it does make really cool sparks...

[Koen1]

Lol well yes I imagine cool sparks is certainly one thing you'll get. 

And depending on how exactly you discharge that flippin hellishly high voltage
you can easily produce strong bursts of X-rays or even nastier radiation...
I sure as hell wouldn't want to be anywhere near that thing when those
"geniuses" at Sandia start blasting away, unless they allow me a good
thick lead shield...