MurkyLitFelon wrote:
Like the power output on a car, these are all just numbers on a box. At best 'watts' (which is a fictional number) will have been measured with a random engine from a production line (+/- 10%) using fresh fuel (+/-10%) into a purely resistive load (+/-50%) at an average frequency (+/- 15%) and voltage (+/- 20%). '1000 watts' of continuous output might run a 1kW convector heater, but might not run a 500W motor - it depends on the load, and my 83 year old mother doesn't have a cosine table to hand to calculate apparent power or the necessary point-on-wave equipment to limit the inrush current.
Sorry for the delay but some of us have to work for a living. My engineers think that the above piece is one of the funniest articles that they have read in a while. Lets get the funniest bit out of the way first, the idea that "watts" is a fictional number. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internatio ... m_of_Units says it all, unless MurkyLitFelon has re-written the text books, gained a PhD in the process, and proudly holds aloft his Nobel Prize for Physics for all and sundry to admire.
We have not panicked since reading the description of how 10% of this and/or 15% of that and/or 50% of something would render our gensets practically useless, for starters Caterpillar would never be away from the courts let alone continuing to produce products for us to endanger ourselves with. The temptation to throw our Briggs and Stratton portable unit (ok its on wheels and weighs over 100 kilos) overboard has been resisted because, unlike MurkyLitFelon, my engineers have assured me that it, too, is still safe to use.
Enough said, for me at least this subject is now closed
