4 ms·
Can you break this down for the mere mortal physics minds here? How did you do this calculation??
by cellis 3y ago
Can you break this down for the mere mortal physics minds here? How did you do this calculation??
- Faaak 3y agoSimple E=mgh. m = mass of displaced water h = height of displaced mass g = gravity
- kurthr 3y agoI did it myself, it's about 10MW continuous assuming there are 40 ships each taking about 3000 seconds to traverse the locks. Each lock is ~30x330x10 cubic meters or 1Billion liters (conservatively). A Watt is 1 meter(lift) x 1 Newton / second. There are 30 meters of lift. Each liter is 1kg and gravity (9.8m/sec2) makes that about ~10 Newtons (9.8N due to gravity). So you get 10^9kg x 10N/kg x 30m / 3000 sec = 100MW continuous. That's about 100, 000 horsepower. Each lock would need more than 16MW of pumping. Solar/hydro power from the rain in lake Gatun is well over 100MW. Due to leakage it's probably 5-10x that or equivalent to a larger nuclear power plant.