Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains Horsepower

What is horsepower? On this explainer, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice break down what horsepower means a unit of measure, and where it comes from. Could we measure explosions in terms of Death Stars?
We hop in our horseless carriages and take a ride down what it means for something to have horsepower. What is the power of one horse? We break down engines and the different metrics used to measure their power. What about watts? How much horsepower does a NASA shuttle rocket engine have? What would it take to get millions of horses to run fast enough to get into orbit? We discuss how the power of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs are quantified. Exploding horses? Death Stars? All that and more, on another StarTalk explainer!
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Science meets pop culture on StarTalk! Astrophysicist & Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson, his comic co-hosts, guest celebrities & scientists discuss astronomy, physics, and everything else about life in the universe. Keep Looking Up!
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[@TheOpinionatedYouTuber]

I’m a huge Star Wars fan and would LOVE to see a show about “Star Wars Sucks: They Got The Science Wrong!” Do it, guys!!!

[@Gunnr1236]

Be an Equal Opportunity Offender... "Star Trek Sucks, Too: They Also Got The Science Wrong". And lest we forget, let's go back to The Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, Plan Nine From OuterSpace... ohhhhhh the fun we could have!!!

[@alicearaujo2030]

@@FlameOnTheBeat It did get destroyed a few moments afterwards

[@davidpinter1663]

Totally do it! I love Star Wars for the magic (don't you guys try telling me Midichlorians are scientifical).

[@Erith_Idokkel_TheMaceDwarf]

@@davidpinter1663 midichlorians are scientific

[@teodortene5428]

Yes, please do that!

[@sanketgurung917]

1:30 Chuck trembling voice reminiscing his grandmother is wholesome ❤️

[@nolan4339]

TNT (trinitrotoluene) and Dynamite (based off nitroglycerin) are two different chemical explosives, so probably best to not use those terms interchangeably.

[@mrlucky5025]

Julius Bernhard Friedrich Adolph Wilbrand, a German scientist invented TNT in 1863. It was used as a yellow dye until 1902 when German arms manufacturers used it to fill artillery shells.

[@MJHiteshew]

Tell that to AC/DC

[@nobodyknows3180]

@@MJHiteshew I was going to say the same thing!

[@nobodyknows3180]

@@mrlucky5025 Trivia Bit: TNT is more stable than dynamite, which contains nitroglycerin, and TNT can be melted and poured into molds, like the inside of artillery shells.

[@Raz.C]

Absolutely!!! TNT or, as you mentioned, Tri-Nitro-Toluene is a toluene molecule (benzene molecule with a methyl group sprouting from the benzene ring) with three nitro groups (NO2) attached to other carbon atoms on the benzene ring. Nitroglycerin, on the other hand, is a glycerol molecule (a straight chained carbon compound) that loses the a proton from its functional group, replacing it with a nitro group (NO2) and with a further 2 nitro groups attached to the ends of the molecule. Nitroglycerin is both more explosive than TNT and MUCH less stable than TNT. In fact, it took a number of years after the discovery of TNT for its discoverers to in fact discover that it was explosive, having to first discover some way to make it go boom. Whereas nitroglycerin will go boom if you even look at it the wrong way. So while both explosives have a trinitro [ (NO2)3 ] functional group, the conjugated benzene molecule adds a great deal of stability to TNT, whereas the crazy reactivity of nitroglycerin has only a saturated hydrocarbon at its base, making it far, Far, FAR more unstable than TNT. TLDR: Nolan is absolutely correct. TNT and Dynamite are VERY different compounds, with VERY different properties that behave VERY differently. No self-respecting educator should EVER confuse the two. NB: NDGT has made numerous errors in the past when it comes to Chemistry, or at least, has made mistakes that are obvious to Chemists, that might be less obvious to physicists, who are less concerned with atomic and molecular interaction and behaviour, with entropy and enthalpy. To a physicist, no doubt, these are both nitro-based explosives and therefore interchangeable. A Chemist, however, recognises that the rest of the molecule has something to say about how the functional group behaves. NDGT's "explainer" about fire was similarly laden with facepalm-inducing factual errors and misunderstandings of what fire is and how fire works, etc...

[@chall4113]

Chuck Nice’s countdown into a “YAHHH” was glorious.

[@es_is_fresh06]

Hilarious 😂😂

[@phongnhu6542]

Me die too haha

[@babasemka]

No, it wasn't

[@imdoctorsan]

I thought Chuck was gonna yell 2, 1, giddyap!

[@Goldengirl48]

Only Chuck could imagine the end of the count down and the beginning of a rocket taking off with the word "Yahhhh!" That reminded me of the end of Space Cowboys and Tommy Lee Jones riding the rocket to the moon like you would a horse. It was a very sad ending to the movie but somehow appropo.

[@ShawnRavenfire]

It's like how phones haven't had dials on them since the seventies, but we still say "dialing" a phone number.

[@randyshoquist7726]

Several years ago NPR did a story about that. They solicited listener suggestions on what we should call the act of entering a phone number on a keypad. The best response was "Digitally Initiate Audio Link, to be referred to ONLY by its acronym."

[@TheSCPStudio]

That term still applies though. A dial is just an interface that allows input of some sort.

[@GoldSrc_]

A dial is basically any UI that allows you to input or see data, so it can still apply.

[@baganatube]

Not to mention hanging it up after you finish talking.

[@shannonjones8877]

Or like how people still say "roll down your window", even using that hand gesture to signal it, when talking about power windows.

[@prakash2814]

Science is so much cool with examples, humor and pop reference. Why can't schools be like this. School system has not upgraded in ages.

[@alexisrivera200xable]

Costs, governments are very averse to investing in education beyond the bare minimum. It makes for harder to manipulate voters and politicians hate that.

[@Harchit23]

@@alexisrivera200xable I'd argue it's more about the teacher and their passion to teach.

[@alexisrivera200xable]

@@Harchit23 Not really that in my mind would be tantamount to offloading the responsibility for the quality of education to the teachers themselves and that both absolves the government from responsibility and excuses the governmnets's lack of spending on quality education. (Not to mention that overworked teachers with little to no resources available to back them up can't really provide quality education to all students no matter how motivated.)

[@De1taP]

As a gearhead and a bookworm, I'm stoked for this one. Big ups Neil and Chuck!

[@OrcinusLaryngologist]

Right!

[@heroichitsuji]

Same reason I clicked! Whaddya drive?

[@Gonzo_Fast]

Great idea about the Star Wars episode, but you should call it simply, “Less than 12 Parsecs”

[@rationaleatheist8769]

“Fewer”

[@ulissedazante5748]

- What a piece of junk! - She'll make point five past lightspeed.

[@DoubleDoubleWithOnions]

Apparently, storm troopers don't have to qualify at the shooting range every 6 months.

[@TristramBudelcom]

Hurts my soul Neil, but TNT trinitrotoluene and Dynamite, processed nitroglycerin are two very different things.

[@stephenvicaro]

I’m 49. The first 5-7 years of my life I called a refrigerator an icebox because of my grandmother. I also remember seeing my great grandmother’s actual icebox that she still used.

[@wyndhamcoffman8961]

8:37 Contrary to the popular AC⚡DC lyrics; trinitrotoluene is not dynamite. I don't know why, but it is a pet peeve of mine that everyone thinks it is.

[@orlock20]

For extreme energy output, I purpose the SOPY (sun's output per year). For instance, a neutron star releases about 7 SOPY per hour. A super nova releases about 10 billion SOPY.

[@qtzdino]

I love Chuck’s idea for the next episode!

[@mattevans-koch9353]

When I was in high school physics I asked my instructor to give an example of the magnitude of an erg. His reply has remained with me for over 50 years: "The magnitude of an erg is about the force of a gnat hitting your forehead at about one mile per hour." Thank you for giving me a better reference gentlemen. Have a great week.

[@keinaanabdi6821]

what is erg? what is a gnat?

[@PSYMAN13]

Wish you were as bright as you are today back then !✌🏻

[@mattevans-koch9353]

@@keinaanabdi6821 Erg is a measure of energy equal to 10E-7 joules. A gnat is a very small flying insect usually about 0.1mm long or smaller.

[@isMatvei]

I had to screenshot this just so I could scroll past it unknowingly later on and have a chuckle.

[@ezedjay]

I remember asking my Dad about Horse Power in the 1980's. He explained it very well but I was always left with the question of - but - how does it really work? Fairly sure if you take 100 horses and test them they all have different power. Is it an average of some horses that were tested or what? Turns out that "Watt defined one horsepower as the equivalent of the energy expended by a single horse lifting 33,000 pounds one foot in the air from the surface of the Earth in one minute." So there you go. That's told me :)

[@picklejho69]

Not only that, I remember reading somewhere that one horse has upwards of 4-6 horsepower themselves. Probably not the actual number, but my memory ain't so good.

[@garlandsmith3493]

Never mind you already said what I made a generalized statement about.

[@effexon]

@@picklejho69 ahh I knew there was some catch there... this has bugged me for long

[@vincentrobinette1507]

This is based on what the average "farm horse" can average over an 8 hour period. For short periods of time, a horse can develop much more. When dealing with tractive effort, such as a tractor or train locomotive, you can use the constant 375. That's based on how many foot pounds per hour one horsepower can do (1,980,000) divided by the number of feet in one mile.(5,280) With that constant, you can calculate how much pulling power you have at what speed, based on the horsepower of the tractor. For example: Let's look at a 4,000 horsepower train locomotive at 60 miles per hour. we'll multiply 4,000 X 375, =1,500,000 then divide by 60, you have a pulling force of 25,000 pounds. If you want to determine the horsepower of a motor or engine, the constant is 5252.1131. For example: Let's suppose your engine produces 400 horsepower at 6,000 RPM. Multiply 400 X 5,252.1131 to get 2,100,845.2. Divide by 6,000 RPM, to get 350.14 foot pounds of torque. Let's suppose the same engine actually produces its peak torque of 425 foot pounds of torque at 3,600 RPM. Multiply the torque and RPM, to get 1,530.000. divide by 5,252.1131, to get horsepower at that RPM. At peak torque, this engine produces 291.3 horsepower. Even though the torque is higher, the horsepower is lower at this reduced RPM. If you look at the dynamometer graph of an engine, you will ALWAYS find, that the torque curve and horsepower curve intersect at 5,252.1131 RPM. At that point, 1 foot pound of torque=1 brake horsepower.(BHP)

[@TauRiOneill]

Love my Star Talk. I think a show comparing the application of science in science fiction would be great. Star Wars vs Star Trek vs Babylon 5 etc.

[@dezaraydunigan8028]

I love this channel! Always looking forward to these good talks and discussions! 💖💖💖🌟🌟

[@woodrobin]

The shuttle engines (and airplane engines) should be measured in Pegasus power . . . although the abbreviation would be a little problematic. Alternatively, we could use flying reindeer power (frp is a little less ridiculous than pp, I suppose).

[@MarkLLawrence]

Pegasus could be pgs.

[@hasithagayalambattaya8929]

It seems we both thought the same thing!😂

[@nishbrown]

"1 Horsepower moves 550 lbs. one foot in one second." - as told to me by my grandpa (1921 -2012 r.i.p.) when I was 5 yrs. old, helping him restore his fathers antique tractors. He drove a 3 wheeled milk truck.

[@fiusionmaster3241]

Respeckt for your grandpa for teaching you that. I salute to both of you.

[@silentotto5099]

That's what I was looking for. I recalled there was a formula for deriving horsepower from my reading as a kid, but I couldn't remember exactly what it was. I figured someone would put it in the comments so I wouldn't have to look it up. Having said that and to be a bit more precise, I think it was 'raise', as in lift off the ground, rather than just 'move'. By raising the weight, it avoided other complications to the measurement, like friction, as would occur if one were move a 550lb weight across the ground.

[@nishbrown]

@@silentotto5099 Yeah. I'm surprised Neil didn't say it. This is a good example of book smarts vs. real life(street) smarts.

[@hansa3580]

So glad to find this video, and ENCOURAGING to hear this accurate description of the unit of measurement, "horsepower"; nice history lessons as well!

[@DevChronicle]

I attended the lecture at Chicago this Sunday. It was splendid 🙏👍

[@frogz]

..... :( i didnt know it existed, i would have gone

[@_TheDeanMachine]

As a car guy I have been waiting for this episode. Love it, please do more.

[@robbiemer8178]

I thought I remembered reading somewhere that "horsepower" was a marketing term as much as a scientific measurement. Coined by early tractor salesmen to explain how much work their new fangled machines could do and to convince farmers how much better the new machine would be vs their old fashioned horses.

[@jay_wright]

well i mean a 1000hp tractor speed wise could do some work, but it wouldnt be efficient lol

[@onepunch7632]

@@jay_wright Not about speed...Power

[@shubhsrivastava4417]

Totally agree to make the DeathStar a unit of energy to measure the energy released in supernovas. 1 DeathStar = 10^44 Joules

[@rogersittnikow]

This was the comment I was looking for!

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

2:00 - Home delivery of some of those are starting to happen again. My next door neighbor has two company-provided coolers on their porch, one for a local dairy to deliver milk, the other for a different local dairy to deliver ice cream.

[@hasithagayalambattaya8929]

Well we still sell ice!

[@mrmac123]

Keep the videos coming!! Both of you are a perfect team. I can laugh and learn at the same time. I used to get detention for that! 😆

[@davidseva6533]

The synergy of you guys balances your work perfectly

[@jimgore1278]

Once, while chatting with my next door neighbour, an older fellow, I mentioned a show I'd seen in which they were collecting ice for ice-boxes way back in the old days. He said, "What do you mean old days? That used to be my job when I was a teenager. We used to cut huge blocks of ice from Lake Ontario, put them on horse-drawn sleds, take them to the shore and then down into the underground storage vaults." We were chatting in the 1980s and he was in his 70s, so the old days weren't as old as I thought.

[@austinpowers7670]

8:33 TNT and dynamite are not the same thing. What Nobel developed by making nitroglycerine safer is what we call dynamite. TNT stands for trinitrotoluene, which has nothing to do with nitroglycerine (dynamite).

[@effexon]

hand sanitizer has nitroglyserine too, small amounts tho

[@MrBob198]

Neil brings the science however its Chuck that gets the audience great combination

[@LeahIsHereNow]

The featured image pulled me in, in the best way. Love this show! 💫🪐✨

[@karenmills441]

Love this show! Just a note: horses are busy, busy here in PA and elsewhere with the Amish. One horse power carriages, lawnmowers, and pony carts. Watching a five or six horse power plow going over a field is amazing! Yes, they use mules, too, but watching a team of Belgians is awe- inspiring.

[@ulissedazante5748]

Here in Italy, horsepower was CV, cavallo vapore. Literally horse steam. My guess is that horsepower appeared to measure power of locomotives, the first engines humans used. And made sense, somehow. How many horses you may need to draw that wagon?

[@hiimgamerspruzzino5804]

I thought it was called only cavalli, that's what i heard

[@ulissedazante5748]

@@hiimgamerspruzzino5804 in common use, yes: "my car has a 75 horses engine" is perfectly normal phrase. But it's just a short form. The official nomenclature on documents was CV, cavallo vapore.

[@StRoRo]

I thought horsepower was first used for steam power during the industrial revolution. It described the amount of work the engine did, ie it replaces the 4 horses which used to turn a pump

[@ASJC27]

Yes. It was coined by James Watt more than a century before cars became a thing.

[@GH-oi2jf]

In the US, we use Hp and Watts differently. The input power of an electric motor is in Watts. The output is in Hp. By the way, a horse is capable of more than one Hp. Hp wasn’t really about horses. It was about measuring work. In Watt’s time, horse-driven mills were common. One horsepower was the power of one typical horse driving a typical one-horse mill continuously for an extended period. That would have been a walking pace for a common draft horse.

[@jerryclasby9628]

Neil and Chuck are one heck of a pair. To have Chuck make Neil laugh with his profound comments is amazing

[@e-money5085]

"Chuck you are thermodynamically fluent, I love you man" I felt that ❤

[@mikebeemd7296]

I learn something new every time I watch these guys! Always great stuff

[@chrishalemusic]

Physics for everyone!!! Because it is part of everything in all our daily lives and these always make me think and consider more things that we take for granted.

[@shpucas]

Well said, Also, have u ever thought how fibonacci sequence and golden ratio plays the role in our and surrounding life too.

[@florinadrian5174]

He should have explained how the size of the space booster rockets was ultimately determined by horses as well. Story goes like this: when the railroads conquered England, they reused existing roads, dating back from Roman times. The width of those roads was determined by the width of the vehicles at the time which were horse drawn cards, so two horse butts determined the width of the railroad. When the US space program was started, they spread the production around the country to increase public support for it and so they had to transport all the components to Texas for assembly and the only way to do it was by railroad. Therefore, even the biggest pieces, such as the boosters, could only be made big enough to be shipped by train and therefore you have 2 horse butts wide space boosters.

[@lukew1383]

I love this relation, and honestly thought Dr. Tyson was going to go there. Although I thought the limiting factor for the solid state boosters was the diameter of the tunnels in the Rocky Mountains. This still relates directly to the width of 2 horse butts though!

[@DarkSoulSama]

In portuguese, we just refer to engine power as being measured in "horses"("cavalos") instead of "horse power". So we really would say that "a space shuttle engine has over 20 million horses".

[@IndigoGollum]

That's pretty funny to me. I'm reminded of the last panel of the xkcd comic Horses.

[@bricjap]

The channel that makes science fun

[@RichR76]

I love Star Wars, and I would LOVE a show pointing out the mistakes

[@carultch]

"Isn't parsec a unit of distance? And if they are in a galaxy far far away, why are they using a unit based on the size of Earth's orbit?"

[@timetraveler255]

From a scientific point of view, almost everything is wrong in Star Wars but is awesome, wonderfully and special for all my life.

[@diegofernandez4789]

Great episode. Would be good to have a debunking as well as a good applied science to movies.

[@1SherryAshley]

I heard you say that you were thinking of watching Expanse. So I started watching it. It’s very interesting but I hope you give a scientific accuracy critique. Love your KZbin shows. ❤️

[@imdoctorsan]

Our high school physics teacher, FDS, who's catch phrase was "I think we have time for a story", taught us thermodynamics by telling us how his mother made the ice in the ICE box last for two weeks, when the ice man came again, by insulating it in newspaper. Problem was the food spoiled because there was no heat exchange. Any Highlands '71 crowd out there?

[@safemoondan6638]

Yeah bro, right here

[@douggtr1]

For Chuck: the current world horse population is about 58.5 million, with declining numbers. Had to look it up since you brought it up!

[@____Wolf]

Now I have an image in my head of someone trying to round up 2/3 of the world's horses to have them collectively jump into orbit.

[@petersutcliffe4927]

I learned about HP as a function of Watts when studying to be an electrician, very nice to hear it explained in simple terms :)

[@carultch]

HP usually indicates the mechanical power, while Watts usually indicates the electrical power. A 74.6% motor would have its kilowatt rating equal to its HP rating, which is a realistic efficiency, but very inefficient by today's standards. It would give a better idea of the bigger picture to see both values in Kilowatts. That way you see a 1.9 kW output for a 2 kW input and you can conclude that 0.1 kW is the power lost as parasitic heat and sound. The motor's 95% efficiency is immediately obvious seeing both numbers in the same units. Same is true with refrigeration and heat pumps, where seeing the thermal and electrical power ratings in kilowatts helps see the bigger picture. Its ability to (perhaps triple) the power you input to the compressor motor into an amount of heat you move from evaporator to condenser, isn't immediately obvious when the thermal power is hidden behind units of BTU per unspoken hour, or "tons of refrigeration".

[@petersutcliffe4927]

@@carultch You are truly knowledgeable in something I barely touched. I learned about HP only as a function of 746 watts in equations involving electric power. It always bugged me that my classes never explained why they measured horse power anyway, or why it was ever relevant. That's one of the many reasons I love Neil DeGrass Tyson's ability to break it down, and give a little context for the rest of us :)

[@carultch]

@@petersutcliffe4927 Depending on the scope and timeline of the course, in the interest of time, they probably have to omit a lot of the background theory, and cut right to teaching the practice, without much effort to answer the "why" questions. Ironically, it was James Watt himself who coined the concept of horsepower. The unit bearing his name, replaced the very unit he coined. Most contemporaries of Watt would not understand what a "foot-pound per second" meant, and he needed a way to state the performance of steam engines in terms to which potential end-users could relate.

[@petersutcliffe4927]

@@carultch Wow, that makes such good sense. Thank you so much for the context!

[@alowren]

Who edited this!? it's amazing!!

[@wehttamretrac1609]

love you guys!!!! keep it up. got to say though that horses are still very much around. they have not "gone away" we in NEW England see them a lot. beautiful animals I have to say> keep doing what you do love it.

[@therealblue42]

I went to a car dealer when I was stationed in Germany. The cars were rated in Watts instead of HP.

[@yourguard4]

I hate it, when they tell you the power of the car, but not the mass or directly the accleration.... why should I want to know about the power in the first place????

[@One_In_Training]

Hey Neil. Dynamite and TNT are not the same thing. This is a widely held misconception that the two terms are interchangeable, but they actually have little in common. Dynamite is Nitroglycerine with sorbents and stabilisers, while TNT as the acronym implies is Tri-Nitro Toluene.

[@yelloweater5506]

Thanks for teaching

[@michaelmcchesney6645]

I am afraid I need to correct my fellow Bronx Science alum. The term "horsepower" was coined by James Watt in the late 18th Century as a way to describe the power of steam engines. Carl Benz wasn't even born until the mid 19th Century. I fear you may also be wrong in your calculation of the power of StarKiller Base. You may be correct if the beam was being aimed at something in the same solar system as the base. But the base fired a beam across the galaxy faster than light. If only 10% of the energy of the star was necessary to destroy a solar system, who is to say it didn't take the other 90% to project the beam through hyperspace? I can't say for sure because Mr. Holtzman didn't cover hyperspace in my 12th grade Astronomy and Astrophysics class. We did cover tachyons though. How much energy would it take to fire a destructive tachyon beam?

[@ivanaguilar5353]

Hey Neil, don’t know if I’m the only one with this question but, how do you keep from having dread at how small we are or how short a life is, furthermore what do you think humans in the future would think of our existence, would they look at it in the same way we do of previous civilizations?

[@NO13LESSE]

Good day, please do an explainer video on the real colors of the rainbow/visible light as seen through a prism, red,orange,yellow,green,cyan,blue. Thank you.

[@cosmicraysshotsintothelight]

The cold air isn't falling. It is being pushed down by the warmer ice box air rising. The effect is "cold air falling" but the actual process is that the warmer rising air transfers some of its heat into the ice at the top of the box, and that convection path continues and the air in the box chills and then starts conducting the heat in the items one places in the box. Remember the heat is what 'moves' (more like distributes)even if the appearance is that the cold is "soaking in" to an item.

[@JasonB808]

For Atomic weapons, they also measure it in how many Hiroshima bombs, volcanos and even asteroid impacts. “The massive volcanic eruption is equivalent to 100 Hiroshima bombs”, or something like that.

[@victroiki7321]

Thank you Neil for making these awesome videos..

[@paulbainbridge5498]

Isn't dynamite nitroglycerin on clay to stabilize it rather than TNT

[@rmeyers2021]

Horsepower is a unit of measure of power. Power is work/time. Work is force times distance. 1 HP is equal to 550 ft-lbs of work per second, or 33,000 ft-lbs of work per minute. A 1 lb load on the end of a 1 ft bar ( 1 lb-ft of torque ) travels 6.2832 feet per revolution, and is 6.2832 ft-lbs of work. 33,000/6.2832=5252 means that at 5252 RPM 1 lb-ft of torque equals 1 HP, or HP=Torque x RPM /5252. If you place an internal combustion engine on a dynomometer and measure the amount of torque the engine produces at a specific RPM you know the HP that engine produces at that RPM, by Torque x RPM/5252. If you measure the torque at every RPM then you have a torque curve of the operating RPM range of the engine. Most specs are PEAK torque at the RPM the engine produces it's peak torque, and the PEAK HP at the RPM that produces the peak HP.

[@Fiction_Beast]

Reading a novel about Mongolia, talking about how wolves chased horses to toughen them up, improve their stamina and speed. So horsepower comes from the wolves. it should be called wolf power.

[@carultch]

The wolf doesn't require nearly as much power to get to and to sustain that speed as does a horse.

[@Fiction_Beast]

@@carultch correct, but it was the wolves who trained the horses to improve themsleves. Without the wolves, horses may have been lazy animals like me.

[@futurerandomness1620]

First of all want to say I really enjoy these explainer videos. One thing I need to bring up is the space shuttle horsepower criticism. Neil complains about them saying it's the equivalent of 37 million horses, because no matter how many horses you get together they still can't fly. Neil then goes on to say that he'd prefer if it was equated to " carpower" instead. The same argument holds though. No matter how many car engines you bolt together it still won't get to orbit. I get what he's alluding to, but it's not the correct substitute.

[@niceman3318]

Another beautiful episode of explaining

[@kickbul]

In Europe most automotive regulation is already in kW so manufacturers show both bhp and kW on spec sheets so people are fairly used to kW. I think bhp only comes up in casual conversation.

[@m-jay356]

The Ben huer had me rolling

[@quickguesswho]

I would like to hear more about Star Trek than Star Wars tbh. Always found Star Trek for interesting.

[@2MANYWWWWWWWWWWWWS4U]

that's because their physics was generally plausible

[@KaosRunes]

I'm a huge fan of Star wars but I know sound can't travel in space, so there would be no sounds of lasers or ships flying. Like you mentioned about BB-8 but also how does his head stay attached to his body but also transmit data. The list goes on.

[@aidanmurray8283]

Chuck was on fire this episode! Love you guys

[@bpk82]

My pops still refers to it as an icebox, to this day. 🧊

[@bpk82]

@@sarafinasummers7863 I’ll take some! 🙋🏻‍♂️

[@MJXII]

Thank you Chuck for making me laugh as always :D

[@tolemac21]

In Australia utility poles are commonly referred to as "telegraph poles". The telegraph was obsolete long ago.

[@GodblessAmercas]

Waiting for Star Wars episode please do it!! May be can think of a nicer name but chuck’s idea is on point💯

[@lianmanuelalonsomendez]

Now I want to know how much horsepower a supernova has.

[@prostobardak]

yes

[@fulstaak]

- "Hello, this is NASA, who are we speaking with?" - "Hello there, my name is Jeff Bezos and I would love to go to space."' - "Not a problem. Do you have the 37.5 million horses required for such a trip?" - "Eee... I mean... I guess... No I don't..." - "Well, well, well. We sell horses at $3000 each.. so we'll take all your money for a 9-second round trip."

[@patricks_music]

Our grandparents saw some amazing progress in their lives. My grandpa lived through the first powered flight to the moon landing..

[@carldawson5069]

I called it a frig. Frigidaire sold alot in some areas and everyone called it a frigidaire (like Kleenex for tissues) There was a waitress near my dad's shop that had 1000mw. Sounds larger like 8Mb (bit) handheld instead of some that rated 1MB (byte).

[@HansonProMusic]

Neil, you need to take into account the power loss of a star conversion and storage (there is always loss of energy in man kinds conversion and storage) and then the loss in the delivery system. Hence the 100:1 ratio is due to loss.

[@amritpalsinghdhir3066]

If someone is losing 99 out of 100 of that much of energy, it doesn't just appear to dissipate. The loss would itself be destroying solar systems. The loss is simply conversion that was not under control. The energy did not disappear.

[@steve-o6413]

I'll never forget when Star Wars first came out on the Big Screen the binary star system immediately hooked me...

[@autohmae]

2:15 so we've pretty much solved perishable items through refrigeration. Which is items with a limited time to be useful without it. But we are currently trying to solve the same problem for electricity and the grid, it's also brought to us when we need it, because we have limited (economically viable) storage, if we can solve energy storage we will have an other technological revolution. 12:31 the system might not be very efficient though

[@wolfybmgo6605]

Sir can u tell me about time machine that we can travell in time or past time

[@vdp673]

I would love to hear about what star wars did that was unrealistic. But maybe with a different title so then people don't get offended 🤔

[@picklejho69]

Well, the magic space wizards are a start

[@adrianopezao4923]

I never imagined that one day I could disagree with NGT!! in fact, the word horsepower didn't come from internal combustion vehicles, but from steam engines, and it has a REAL metric measurement, ie it is possible to measure the 'power' that an average horse can provide, James Watt determined that : 1 horsepower is the equivalent of 1 horse lifting a load of 150 kg for 30 meters in 1 minute. this served precisely as a reference for people at the time when engines were invented so that they had a better idea of ​​the force that these engines produced, the unit of measurement in Watts appeared soon after. Horsepower are used until today, as a reference of strength not only to vehicles, but to all types of equipment that have "engines" and this remains until today, not because of cultural ignorance, or laziness of evolution, it is merely for lack of a reference. better, since the horse power unit directly alludes to an animal that 99% of humanity knows and has a good sense of the strength it can produce, since we've spent generations on their backs. I find it difficult in the near future for humanity to find such an allusive reference measurement unit. we have many other units of measurement, which in the end mean the same thing, but are completely different to understand, for example: 1 rocket with 10 mega newtons of power is the same thing as 1 rocket with 2 million horsepower, which of them is easier to imagine?! by the way, the Americans have their 'own' measurement units, and they are confused themselves. Metric system is the future

[@vincentbeaulieu5300]

I was gonna say something along those lines but with nowhere near as much detail thank you !!!!! My first sentence was going to be ( i cant believe i have to disagree with NDT 😬

[@eshwarsubramaniam4288]

So you're telling me that not only do you know the power a horse can generate because "generations" of our ancestors rode on them, you can somehow imagine the amount of power that 2 million horses could generate? Get outta here man, 2 million horsepower is exactly as unimaginable as 30 megawatts or 90 fairypulses.

[@adrianopezao4923]

@@eshwarsubramaniam4288 REFERENCE man...you know what reference means?! and yes, i can IMAGINE many many horses...because i know and touch a horse, and never see a 'megawatt' or 'fairypulse' creature...so, for me its much more easy imagine thing thats are not ABSTRACT.

[@shado9300]

i love the fact that although not on Neal's level of understanding, Chuck is quite sharp!

[@lghammer778]

Those Star Wars jokes were really funny & I’m a huge fan of the series lol Laughter’s good medicine. Side note 📝 thanks for explaining Ice Boxes, I had no idea those existed like that. I did know, however, that blocks of ice were bought and sold pre-refrigerator era. & definitely wanna see the horse power rating of a Type II supernova hahaha Cheers fellas, great show!

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[@olivapatrick1547]

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[@johnnysmiths7096]

I bought my car from the money made through him, he has the best trading strategies. Thanks to Mike

[@rashadd2615]

I honestly researched this topic a few weeks ago to get a better understanding... And Neil goes into detail about it not too much later. Great minds think alike I guess

[@oceanblue2386]

Neil and Chuck, a side benefit from listening to your brilliant series is when you joke and laugh a lot! I find it brings me happiness and makes me laugh when I'm going to bed at night which is very peaceful and makes me feel happy! Who would have thought!

[@klaxoncow]

The one that can be confusing is that my mother sometimes says "the wireless" and she means the radio. But, of course, these days, "wireless" means wi-fi or Bluetooth. It gets more confusing when old terms see "re-use" for modern concepts like that.

[@hoarder66]

Neil, does gravity on the deathstar work from the bottom of the deathstar or the center?? Is it big enough to have gravity to hold people to it? Do the canon operators on the bottom have to turn upsidedown??

[@LemoUtan]

Great footage

[@danielabraham7547]

Dr. Tyson, please do an entire episode on dwarf planets in our solar system 🙏

[@nabilhassan8155]

Dr. Tyson, if the power of an engine is still represented under HorsePower, i.e 100HP, 500HP, etc, then what exactly is a CC of an engine? Also, if the future of cars is eclectic then is ok to assume that the future units to represent car power would be Watts?

[@daydreamer05]

Please sir make a video sense on time, that how big time can be and what small fraction it can have?

[@AceSpadeThePikachu]

In many documentaries about asteroid collisions (most famously the one that wiped out the dinosaurs), I often here the energy released in units of "atom bombs," and sometimes "hydrogen bombs." Like for example, I've commonly heard the aforementioned dinosaur-killer impact compared to "one billion Hiroshima bombs), or "half a million Tsar Bombas." Some supervolcano eruptions and coronal mass ejections commonly get measured this way too. (Side-note, I 100% agree with Chuck. PLEASE do an episode listing your top 20 things scientifically wrong and 20 things scientifically correct in Star Wars. Get the other Chuck on for that one since you know...he's the scifi expert.)

[@mikeburston9427]

Hi Neil and Chuck with the death star 2 power you forgot to take into account all the losses due to large bureaucratic inefficiencies, this could be easily calculated buy scaling from other government inefficiencies as a model, we know they skimped on cost in construction. just look at how they made the doors too low and there is no dryer for the trays in the canteen

[@blacksnow7106]

some Car Manufacturers are already migrate from HP to W. But it's mostly exotic cars though, hopefully the more common cars will follow soon

[@tonylalangue6243]

My old dad told me the story of the milkman in Mangotsfield, England (near Bristol), who had a horse drawn cart. Many evenings, after his rounds he would go into the local pub and get drunk. He would, then, climb into the cart and the horse, knowing the way, would take him home. One night, he left the pub and climbed into his cart to find the horse staring him in the face. Some joker (or jokers) had reversed the horse in his harness.

[@atkinsondp]

In metric-land (aka Australia) we measure cars in kilowatts. Sadly we get influenced by UK and US tv so we do use it colloquially, but not officially.

[@jerzeyguy71]

WAIT!!! I remember seeing this like a year ago, did you just throw out a previous cast? ok, I finished the cast, I do not remember the star wars talk, so did you do a new version of the horse power?

[@shpucas]

Love the show legends, Startalk became my fav not long ago,and will be till we reach the stars. But, i would like to hear your view on fibonacci stuff and and older world science, golden ratio is an example. I drop a challenge to u guys 🙋‍♂️. Excite us 🤝