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Chemistry Forums for Students => Undergraduate General Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Golden_luck on June 16, 2020, 06:30:57 AM

Title: Energy
Post by: Golden_luck on June 16, 2020, 06:30:57 AM

I recently came across this question in a chemistry text book. It's seems relatively simple but I get an answer different to the one in the book and can't understand why.

A 2000MW power station has an energy output of 2000MJ/s. How long would it take to generate 3.39x1016J of energy?

First, I converted joules to mega joules giving: 3.39x10^10J
Then, 3.39x10^10 / 2000
Giving, 16950000 s.
Which works out at about 196 days.
The answer the book gave was 175 days.

Thanks for any help.

Title: Re: Energy
Post by: Borek on June 16, 2020, 06:45:25 AM

Show how you got to your answer, show what is the book answer and we will start from there.

Title: Re: Energy
Post by: Enthalpy on June 17, 2020, 02:30:32 PM

I get 196 days too.

Side note: I feel it safer to stick the SI units without prefix, if you need to treat 10ⁿ anyway. Here, convert to watt rather than MW. One error source less.

Unless the unit is very common, like grams in chemistry.