(This is an example of an order-of-magnitude problem. Your instructor should hav

Question

(This is an example of an order-of-magnitude problem. Your instructor should have gone over one of these in class. The point of these is to show that you can arrive at reasonable estimates for really big numbers by applying common sense and dimensional analysis. ) Your crazy uncle Charlie comes up with an idea to solve the energy shortage by extracting rotational energy from the Earth. He says that we could power the whole United States for 100 years and you'd never notice the difference. First, make an order-of-magnitude estimate for the annual energy use in the United States. Take 350 million as the U.S. population, then estimate the energy used each year by estimating how many 100 W light bulbs (or equivalent....consider refrigerators, hair dryers, stoves, air conditioners to be the equivalent of several 100 W light bulbs; better yet, look up real power requirements for an air conditioner or a hair dryer!!) are continuously in use in each household for a 24 hour period. Then at the end, multiply by some factor to account for non-household energy use (restaurants, factories, office buildings, etc). The point here is not to arrive at a specific

Explanation / Answer

obviously scientist are far more intelligent than your uncle charlie, to have known the way to extract energy from rotation of earth....... but there exists no such way, at least not by the people living on earth, because there exists the force of rotation( and hence energy) only from an inertial frame of reference and not from the frame that it self is undergoing the rotation

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse #
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.