3 ms·
It's mind-boggling how consistently almost everyone is confused about energy and power units and makes meaningless calculations and claims. People make this kin
by foxglacier 2y ago
It's mind-boggling how consistently almost everyone is confused about energy and power units and makes meaningless calculations and claims. People make this kind of mistake pretty much every time there's an energy story. Journalists too. It is confusing but a little red flag appears in my head whenever I try to do this kind of math.
It would be nice if we used energy as the main unit and energy/time for power like in SI. Rates seem to be more intuitive than integrals.
- Terr_ 2y agoIMO the number one biggest contributor to this problem is "watt hours", it a cursed unit, a name which sows confusion. Even if it were named nonsense like "floops", the world would become a better clearer place. It automatically sounds as if it involves watts, hours, or even watts per hour, but it's actually none of those things. It's just (joules * 3600), where that fixed multiplier comes from a quirk of history in how we subdivided our clocks. My advice? Whenever you see it, replace it with "jumbojoules", as in "I used 87 kilo-jumbojoules running that appliance this month."