4 ms·
Notably the 16” MacBook Pro (every model since 2019) goes right up to the 100 Wh limit.
by SllX 2y ago
Notably the 16” MacBook Pro (every model since 2019) goes right up to the 100 Wh limit.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoFor comparison, 100 Wh is 360,000 joules, which is just under either the energy released by explosion of 100 grams of TNT, or the kinetic energy of a small car at highway speeds, or the kinetic energy of 1 gram meteor hitting Earth.[1] (Sorry, I've never been a fan of the "Wh" unit and so wanted to put that total energy into layman terms.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)
- supermatt 2y agoOr a McDonalds medium fries? EDIT: doh, just realised you were comparing with other forms of damage. That said, I think its truly amazing that a snack has the same energy as a nasty car crash. Mind blown.
- HPsquared 2y agoThat is, 100 Wh = 86 kcal. Enough energy to heat 1 kg of water by 86°C (or 86 kg of water by 1°C).
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoTo me it is hard to visualize how much damage the total energy gained from digesting chemical bonds of food could do to an airplane. I can better visualize the damage that could be done by a highway car crash or detonating a handful of TNT in an airplane.
- cptcobalt 2y agoThese counterfactual comparisons are a slippery slope and not as helpful as you think. I hardly think that you, I, or most others have an intuitive understanding for what happens when a 1 gram meteor hits earth. Have you ever witnessed that? The average failure state of a battery is not similar to detonating a handful of TNT on an airplane, which is a more instantaneous explosion. Sure, some battery failure states are violent and would unquestionably be a cause for an airplane to call a mayday and land, but something like puncturing a soft-cell battery is still a slower release than TNT. We should just expect people to get better at understanding useful units — I'd prefer someone learns Wh since it is indeed a useful metric—kWh is the usual major unit of energy at home, and Wh is just smaller than that.
- em3rgent0rdr 2y agoI was trying to guesstimate a theoretical upper-bound on the damage. Looking at youtubes online, it seems a labtop battery explosion is still scary and more like a handful of firecrackers than TNT, but what actually seems worse is that the explosion is followed by the labtop being on fire and producing subsequent smaller explosions. So the worse case is that the fire ignites other stuff in the plane, which includes other lithium batteries.
- sfn42 2y agoCan the battery actually release that energy as explosively as the TNT can? I mean under normal corcumstances, not maliciously modified.