72 TRILLION cords of firewood?!?

[tymbee]

So I'm watching this Netflix series where they're talking about our sun. They've figured out that if you wanted to build a fire that would have lasted as long as the energy in the sun that it would take 72 TRILLION cords of firewood or about 12,000 cords for each man, woman and child on the planet.

They also calculated that if you built a fire with wood the size of our sun (About 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the sun) and had enough oxygen to burn it, it would only last about 5 or 6 thousand years.

Well, uh... besides the obvious point that some scientists might have just a bit too much time on their hands, to me there's a lot of missing info in these statements! For example, they didn't say what KIND of wood they were talking about. Or, how seasoned the wood was. Or how tightly stacked these cords are. Or if the wood was stacked off the ground, top covered, facing south, etc. etc.

I'm certainly no scientist, but c'mon guys. A little more info here would give your calculations a lot more credibility.

 

[Stinkpickle]

It sounds like a fun experiment to try out tomorrow.

 

[andym]

It sounds like a fun experiment to try out tomorrow.

If you can just get everyone to donate 12,000 cords or so........

 

[Jags]

I am trying to calculate how big the secondary burn tubes would need to be.....

 

[Stinkpickle]

If you can just get everyone to donate 12,000 cords or so........

It’s all good. I got ‘em covered, because I’m two years ahead.

 

[johneh]

That's about what I use every winter
Well it feels like that

 

[thunderhead]

This got me thinking... how many firewood cords worth of energy does the sun emit every second?

The math is pretty straightforward... lets say we take a cord of typical hardwood... lets say 25 million BTUs... theres about 1000 Joules in a BTU so thats gives us 25 billion Joules of energy per typical hardwood cord... which is 2.5*10^10 because we are going to need to be in scientific notation for this next bit. Stars are downright scary when you try to compare them with human-scale energy.

The sun emits about 4*10^26 Joules every second. Divide that by 2.5*10^10 joules per cord... and we are left with about 1.6*10^16 cords. 16,000 trillion cords. Or 16 quadrillion.

The sun emits 16,000 trillion cords of wood worth of energy. Per second.

 

[tymbee]

I suppose that's trillions-- with a "T"?
[drives me crazy when people feel compelled to say things like: "That's billions... with a "B". As if listeners are too dense to grasp such a large number]

Granted that scientific notation is less messy, but you can't deny using a number with a whole bunch of zeros after it is more impressive.

But I digress... bottom line being that's one helluva lot of firewood!

 

[Dataman]

Pretty Sure Presto Logs would be better in the Short Term! Or Pellet Sun!

 

[kennyp2339]

Wrap your heads around this, before the dinosaurs roamed the earth, the earth apparently had close to 200ft of dead fall tree's, apparently funguses were not developed yet to aid in decay, so many spots had huge forest fires and stuff.

 

[kennyp2339]

I suppose that's trillions-- with a "T"?
[drives me crazy when people feel compelled to say things like: "That's billions... with a "B". As if listeners are too dense to grasp such a large number]

Granted that scientific notation is less messy, but you can't deny using a number with a whole bunch of zeros after it is more impressive.

But I digress... bottom line being that's one helluva lot of firewood!

When I explain what a billion is to people I always say this... 1 million seconds is close to 11.5 days time, 1 billion seconds is almost 32 years worth of time. That usually snaps a couple heads.