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Feel the power!
3

Feel the power!

Feel the power!

(OP)
As an engineer, this is the one imprecise phrase that annoys me the most.  I have no idea what power feels like.  I can probably guess a force or a torque (and within subjective limits, a temperature).  But what does power feel like?

RE: Feel the power!

On a cold winter's day, at a coal fired 4-unit electric generating station, each unit operating at maximum capacity (280 MW each, in the case), you can "feel the power" - the ground, and everything on it, literally shakes (a low frequency rumble).

www.SlideRuleEra.net

RE: Feel the power!

Some exercise contraptions allow you set the resistance in Watts.

Half an hour on a stationary bike at 100 Watts and I feel like having a beer.

RE: Feel the power!

When I was a kid, there were these devices in carnival arcades, you'd put in a nickel ($.05). At the control panel, you'd grasp a handel with one hand, while with the other hand attempt to turn a dail as far as you could thus increasing the ammount of shocking power you'd received. I can say, I hit the wall and I felt the power.

Is that the same?

pennpoint  

RE: Feel the power!

I think astronauts would have a fair feeling for the power during the initial boost stage of a launch. That must be a fairly unforgettable ride.

RE: Feel the power!

(OP)
You guys are all describing force (be it mechanical or electromotive).  You may be able to estimate the power required to create that force, but it's not the power that your senses are responding to.

RE: Feel the power!


Since in Physics power is defined as the time rate of doing work, the increased (or rather harder) effort of running vs walking upstairs would probably be "feeling the power".

I question whether the following examples could mean getting directly or indirectly the feeling of power: sensing the punch of a pugilist's fist on your face, quickly pressing the brake pedal on your car, hearing the noise of an excavating shovel or of a fast running train, paying the bill for the power consumption of 500 floodlights, 1 kW each, at Yankee Stadium at x cents/kWh.

Or, whether, more subjectively, suffering from a tyrannical authority, admitting somebody's inherent or acquired abilities, getting penalized by the Law, are examples that could also be identified with "feeling the power"...  

Power could be also related to the value assigned to a mathematical expression and its exponent. Recognising such, would it be considered "feeling the power" ?

RE: Feel the power!

Because our touch sense measures pressure and we can sense force (weight), we just don't have a power sensor.  But our brains should be able to do the calculation.

RE: Feel the power!

I feel "power" as in my authority over other people, projects, decisions. I know what that power feels like.

RE: Feel the power!

I felt power the other day when while stopped at a light in my volkswagen.  After a few seconds, a Harely Davidson "fat-boy" pulls up next to me.  The whole intersection shook from the rumble.  That's what I envisioned power to be.

BTW, just bought my own fat-boy....just kidding.

Regards,
Qshake

Eng-Tips Forums:Real Solutions for Real Problems Really Quick.

RE: Feel the power!

(OP)
I guess you probably can feel the power from one of those tanks.  Not much of it gets anywhere near the rear wheel, so it must go somewhere...

RE: Feel the power!

Into the Speedi-Dry  

RE: Feel the power!

Isn't complaining about that use of "power" akin to complaining about the use of "work" to mean anything other than a force applied through a distance?  ("You didn't do any work going up and down those stairs, since you came back to where you started!" or "What do you mean, you went to work?  Work isn't a place, it's your force times your distance!  You went to your place of employment!  Get it right!")

Is there also a problem with people who say, "I just don't have any energy left at the end of the day"?

There's a whole conversational world out there that has nothing whatsoever to do with equations, and most of those "conversational" uses of technical terms by far predate the technical uses.  Does anyone here imagine that the word "power" was originally coined to mean force times distance divided by time?

Hg

Eng-Tips guidelines:  FAQ731-376

RE: Feel the power!

News articles often use the following words interchangeably:

power
energy
voltage
current
charge

A typical sentence:  "He was electrocuted by a wire charged with 10,000 volts of high-energy electric current and is in the hospital recovering."  (It's a good hospital.)

William

RE: Feel the power!

Quote (SpinalTap):

"This is our power ballad.  Feel the power!"
--Spinal Tap's Derek Smalls (a.k.a. Lemmy of Motorhead) introducing a ballad in the second "Spinal Tap" movie

RE: Feel the power!

Power is work divided by time, so having lots of power allows a large amount of work to be done in short amount of time.  You can do the same amount of work over a longer period of time at a lower power level.
We feel acceleration, but we are more sensitive to changes in acceleration which is jerk (yes that is a technical term defined as ?a/?t or ?3x/?t3)
The correlation between work and acceleration is mass (assuming no losses) so having lots of power will allow a greater acceleration.  Having control of lots of power can change acceleration quickly resulting in large amounts of jerk.

This is why the jerks have all the power!

or is that having power results in jerks?

Hydrae

RE: Feel the power!

If you want to feel the power, standup close to a formulae 1 race car under full acceleration.

Naresuan University
Phitsanulok
Thailand

RE: Feel the power!

Never felt the power, only lack of it. When a FEM model meshed itself to several GB and I stupidly tried to run it on my PC!

Ciao.

RE: Feel the power!

Marty didn't feel the power but Nigel nows what real power is all about....his amp goes to eleven

Nigel: This is a top to a—you know, what we use on stage, but it's very, very special because if you can see...

Marty: Yeah...

Nigel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look...right across the board.

Marty: Ahh...oh, I see....

Nigel: Eleven...eleven...eleven....

Marty: ..and most of these amps go up to ten....

Nigel: Exactly.

Marty: Does that mean it's...louder? Is it any louder?

Nigel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here...all the way up...all the way up....

Marty: Yeah....

Nigel: ...all the way up. You're on ten on your guitar.. where can you go from there? Where?

Marty: I don't know....

Nigel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Marty: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
[pause]

Nigel: These go to eleven.

Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NIVIDA Quadro FX 1400
      o
  _`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

"There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea"  Bernard-Paul Heroux
 

RE: Feel the power!

Thats such a brilliant scene...

RE: Feel the power!

Anybody standing within about 100 feet of a pair of Phantom jets taking off in full reheat feels the power.  After they have picked themselves up and got rid of the ringing in the ears, that is...

RE: Feel the power!

A B1 bomber took off one day from Lajes Field, Azores, with its quad turbofans glowing on full afterburner.  Passing about 100 yards overhead, it rattled one's entire body, and set off every car alarm along the street.  Whoa nelly.

William

RE: Feel the power!

I stood behind and under a blast wall once to do some repairs on a scissor-lift. Without warning, the MD-11 engines on the other side fired up. What power! I couldn't hear much for the rest of the day.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: Feel the power!

(OP)
Sound power is typically measured in pW. In power terms that's tiny, even when it sounds loud.

BTW, I took SPL measurements inside a gas turbine test cell in my student days.  Imagine a jet engine INSIDE a closed room...

RE: Feel the power!

That close, not only can you hear it (for a short time before you go numb), but you can feel it also.

Chris
Sr. Mechanical Designer, CAD
SolidWorks 05 SP3.1 / PDMWorks 05
ctopher's home site

FAQ559-1100
FAQ559-716

RE: Feel the power!

Back in the sixties, you felt the power with 550 horses under the hood and the petal to the metal.

NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas

RE: Feel the power!

I had McDonalds for breakfast and Taco Bell for lunch.

I have a notion that I'll be 'feeling the power' pretty soon.

regards,

Hydroformer

RE: Feel the power!

Hydroformer,

Power as in "power nap"?

William

RE: Feel the power!

Ha, Weh3. Not quite a power nap.

More like peeling the glaze off the porcelin kinda power.

regards,

Hydroformer

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