Talk:Missoula Floods

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[edit] Kinetic energy quote

I removed this line:

The kinetic energy of the massive mass of water was approximately 2 terawatts (TW) - equal to the entire electricity consumption of the globe in 2005.1

b/c a Terawatt is not a unit of energy. I checked the source, but it makes the same mistake.

Nbrahms 17:44, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catch. It's been a long time since I've sat in a science class, so my thinking's a little fuzzy here; but it seems that if there's a grain of truth to the quote, it would be worthwhile to re-phrase it in an accurate way, as the point it makes illustrates the power of the floods in a very visceral way. Is that a possibility, or is the claim just hopelessly misguided? -Pete 18:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

To be energy, the units would have to be something like terawatt hours, horsepower years (which is a silly one), or plain old joules, etc. It should also be clearer which part of the kinetic energy is specified: is it just the dam breach or the flow of water to sea level? Also, the phrase "massive mass" should be avoided (in the original text). —EncMstr 19:30, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

You can see my calculations on Talk:Dry Falls. I calculated how much kinetic energy the floodwaters contained, per second, as it flowed through Dry Falls - a certain amount flowing at a certain speed. This gives a figure of 2.08 x 10¹² Joules per second, which is the same as TeraWatts (Joules per second).

You are correct that my comparison of this figure with world electricity consumption was flawed. World eelectricity consumption over 2006 was 15.45 trillion kWh. If we divide by the number of hours in a year, to get the average amount of electricity used by the globe on an hourly basis, we get 1.7 TeraWatts per hour.

Dry Falls flowed continuously for at least 2-3 days, so we can use my TW/s figure as TW/h. If we could generate 2.0 TeraWatts per hour using the falls, and the world today uses 1.7 Terawatts per hour, we could power the entire globe for the period of greatest flow during the flood. I will edit the kinetic energy figure accordingly. Thanks for spotting my error.

Phew! Ppe42 23:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Terawatts per hour" is NOT a unit of energy

...or even power, for that matter. It would represent a _change_ in power, actually -- increasing or decreasing power. You can say "then the power increased at 2 terawatts per hour" but you cannot say "2 terawatts per hour of energy" or even "2 terawatts per hour of power". One watt = one joule/one second. One watt/hour = 3600 watts/second, and 1 watt/second = one joule per second PER second. This is a rate of change of a rate! Like how acceleration measures the change of velocity, which is a rate of motion (and is measured in similarly-patterned units -- meters per second _per second_.).mike4ty4 23:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it was intended to be Terrawatt-hours, or 1,000,000 kWh. Cacophony 00:18, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

See the Talk:Dry Falls page for calculations used to arrive at the 2.0 TW kinetic energy figure. Moved from above; fixed wikilink.Walter Siegmund (talk) 03:07, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The Idaho Museum of Natural History cites the flow of the Missoula Floods as 9.5 cubic miles per hour. Now the question is, at what point does this calucation become original research? Cacophony 01:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The 9.5 cubic miles per hour number seems to refer to the peak discharge at the failed ice dam. That is how I read it. At Dry Falls, it would have been less because of alternative channels, including the present day channel of the Columbia River, and upstream empoundment. I doubt that the 9 cubic miles per hour at Dry Falls number that was alleged in the content that I removed is plausible. Regarding your question, I don't think NOR is intended to prevent the results of simple calculations from being included in articles. It is important, however, that the other editors be able to understand and verify the content. That depends on the difficulty of the calculation and the expertise of the editors. I do think NOR does apply to editors estimating the effect of alternate channels and empoundment on flow at Dry Falls. Walter Siegmund (talk) 07:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

While on the one hand, I want to stand by my calculation, given my assumptions ... I will respect that my little factoid about the kinetic energy of the floodwater verges on original research. Good work spotting my blog-reference, too.  :-) Ppe42 14:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)