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HankLloydRight
No Roads
Buy the way, according to Bob Gale, it's really GIGAWATTS. When making the movie, they wanted a big number and looked up the prefixes for large numbers and liked "GIGA-". The problem was, nobody knew how to pronounce it correctly, so he just went with the actors pronouncing it as "Jigga" in the movie, not knowing it's actually pronounced with a hard "G".
The BTTF community is happy to spell it Jigawatts per the movie's pronunciation. Gale admits it was a goof on their part as they didn't know how to pronounce it, but the world at large knows Jiggawatt as the unit in the movies
HankLloydRight
No Roads
But it's never actually spelled that way in the movies, only pronounced that way, which then could be spelled either way. I also don't agree that the entire BTTF community agrees on that spelling.
breser
AutoPilot Nostradamus
Seeing as you guys have been talking about 1.21 Gigawatts. I figured I'd post this here. To use 1.21 Gigawatt hours you'd need to use 1,210,000 kWh. Based on the 34 kWh per 100 miles on the window sticker you'd need to drive a Model S approximately 3,558,823 miles.
It's not spelled in the movie at all, which is what I'm saying. And I didn't mean to imply it's the only acceptable spelling. I'm saying that the BTTF community is happy to spell it with a J, which is what I said. It's not "wrong" to spell it with a J, it's not "wrong" to spell it with a G.
Wikipedia even says that the closed-captioning in home video versions spells the word as it appears in the script, jigowatt!
Urban Dictionary: jigawatt
http://jalopnik.com/back-to-the-future-1-21-jigawatts-license-plate-on-tesl-1500112636
https://www.facebook.com/1.21jigawattsmn
1.21 Jigawatts :: 2012 Red Bull Creation
HankLloydRight
No Roads
I'd rather know how fast I can "supercharge" my battery with 1.21GW of power.
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It was dark out so I couldn't get a pic of the car -- it was a Blue 85D in Stamford, CT
I pointed out the plate to my g/f and said "It's 'BATGIRL' but with 2 'T's ??" as which point my g/f said "yeah -- BATTERY GIRL -- you didn't get that?"
"Duh, no I didn't"
DiversifiedOne
Member
SteveS0353
Member
Some sources support the pronunciation of "giga-" with a hard 'g', and yet others declare the pronunciation is with a soft 'g'. I believe the latter is correct, and despite what the producers of Back to the Future later said, Dr. Brown pronounced it correctly as "jigga-watt".
The original of the prefix is Greek, from gigas meaning giant. The Greek root word is pronounced with a soft 'g', and is "giant" and "gigantic" in modern English. The soft 'g' pronunciation has been formalized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in their pronunciation guide for metric prefixes.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary supports the soft 'g' pronunciation here
Of course, everyone will recognize both pronunciations, so meaning will be clear, but I prefer the soft 'g' form as more true to its root.
The original of the prefix is Greek, from gigas meaning giant. The Greek root word is pronounced with a soft 'g', and is "giant" and "gigantic" in modern English. The soft 'g' pronunciation has been formalized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in their pronunciation guide for metric prefixes.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary supports the soft 'g' pronunciation here
Of course, everyone will recognize both pronunciations, so meaning will be clear, but I prefer the soft 'g' form as more true to its root.
HankLloydRight
No Roads
Kickin
Member
American Heritage Dictionary 4th edition indicates the pronunciation of gigawatt as (soft-g, hard-g) -- I won't attempt to literally reproduce the transliterations here. However, the audio sample (on my Mac) uses the hard-g initial consonant. I don't think that the order of the transliterations is significant, but I'm not sure.
The 5th edition indicates (hard-g, soft-g) but the audio sample (on my iPhone) uses the soft-g initial consonant!
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My plate, currently waiting for pick-up in a DMV office, is: PLUS EV
The 5th edition indicates (hard-g, soft-g) but the audio sample (on my iPhone) uses the soft-g initial consonant!
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My plate, currently waiting for pick-up in a DMV office, is: PLUS EV
We should really redirect this into the most important hard/soft G conversation extant - GIF. It's pronounced with a hard G, for two reasons. 1) It's short for Graphical Interchange Format. Hard G in Graphical. 2) It's most common alternative is a JPEG, soft G sound. The creator recently came out and threw the entire world into a tizzy by saying he thinks it should be a soft G. Obviously, he's wrong. But it's still a debate to some. I know it's a hard G, GIF. JIF is peanut butter.
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lucy
bluehair
I am probably going to cancel my mid 15K MX reservation tomorrow and order an MS 90D. (annoyed by no foldy seats, lack of info :crying: )
Tending to want to keep my plates I had already ordered for the X, XSTATIC - it would still be appropriate, don't you think?
Or should I relinquish them to a possible future MX owner?
Please help!
It's only $25 to switch, if I can think of something else.
Thanks in advance! :smile:
Tending to want to keep my plates I had already ordered for the X, XSTATIC - it would still be appropriate, don't you think?
Or should I relinquish them to a possible future MX owner?
Please help!
It's only $25 to switch, if I can think of something else.
Thanks in advance! :smile:
SteveS0353
Member
Written gigabytes, but yes, I would and do pronounce it as "jiggabytes", consistent with the NIST standard pronunciation of the prefix. But that's just me...
kaiserpathos
Member
snort
Member
1.21GW is about 10,000 superchargers at full chat.
Doc Brown's deLorean only drew those 1.21GW for a few seconds. if generating that with perfect conversion efficiency, an 85kwh Tesla battery could do 1.21GW for about 1/4th of a second. Of course, the battery would probably self destruct in a flash comparable to the one his time machine made if it tried to do that.
Current nuclear reactors tend to put out between 0.4 and 1.4GW. The biggest current solar power plant, in the Mojave, is about 0.4GW. most are way smaller. The biggest wind farms are just over 1GW, with hundreds of individual turbines.
--Snortybartfast
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